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Why are you still paying for Youtube? I run uBlock and haven't seen ads in years, don't see any cellphone format crap now thanks to this list, and VacuumTube on
by drnick1 9mo ago
Why are you still paying for Youtube? I run uBlock and haven't seen ads in years, don't see any cellphone format crap now thanks to this list, and VacuumTube on my TV defaults to 4K.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo agoHacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil” Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”
- AlexandrB 9mo agoI pay for plenty of goods and services. Just not YouTube. As others have noted, YouTube premium makes ads go away, but none of the other engagement baiting and user disrespecting anti-patterns. As far as I'm concerned, Google is in adversarial relationship with its users, whether your paying or not.
- phero_cnstrcts 9mo agoDoes it make the sponsor sections of the videos go away too?
- Nannooskeeska 9mo agoNo, but SponsorBlock[0] is fantastic for that. I even have it setup on my home server[1] so it skips sponsor segments on my Apple TV, which is where we watch most of our YouTube. [0] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
- Gigachad 9mo agoIt makes them less annoying. With premium if you hit the scrub forward button once it jumps directly to the end of the sponsor section
- raw_anon_1111 9mo agoI don’t know. But most of the time when I don’t like a service, I don’t use it. I know that’s a crazy idea. I find YouTube like everything Google does a piss poor user experience. I’m forced to only use it to watch official AWS videos and those don’t have ads.
- sam_bristow 9mo agoI currently pay for YouTube premium but I'm strongly considering stopping again. For me it's a combination of prices creeping up (small part) and the worsening UX and engagement-bait (big part). It's the same reason I dropped Spotify a few years ago.
- sidrag22 9mo agoi dropped spotify because i saw how terrible the non paid version of spotify is between payments, and was offended at how much i felt they used my library to hold me hostage. Im not interested in being held hostage to pay a company xx$ a month for literally my entire life. At least when a netflix subscription is over, its not crafting up ways to torture its users into feeling obligated to resubscribe. Not that i like the streaming video services much either...
- AngryNPC 9mo agoWith the change in culture here, especially in the last 2-3 years, HN might as well be called Reddit News now. So it's not surprising that most people aren't consistent with their principles.
- shermantanktop 9mo agoWas HN known for consistency of principles before? I don’t remember that. Whenever an online community is anthropomorphized as an individual, it looks hypocritical. The only groups that don’t look hypocritical are monocultural backwaters of groupthink, permabans, and self-editing.
- calmbonsai 9mo agoI pay for plenty of other media (music, games, sports, comedy, books) and even do some Patreon for a few podcasts and YT channels, but I refuse to directly support a publishing monopoly that has had an actively user-hostile interface for over a decade.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo agoI do too. I don’t use YouTube with the one exception of official AWS videos. But those don’t have commercials.
- dietr1ch 9mo agoAnd how do I pay for a YouTube competitor that's libre or at least won't spy back without losing access to its monopolisticly large catalog?
- raw_anon_1111 9mo agoYes I know that Google just reported YouTube’s revenue is larger than Netflix’s. But I really don’t find anything interesting on YouTube. Every time I try to find an interesting tutorial on for me AWS, if it isn’t produced by AWS itself, it’s usually subpar and I end up just paying for it on Udemy or using my company paid Pluralsight.
- dietr1ch 9mo agoI find plenty of interesting videos, but I needed to slowly craft my following list. I started with some CS lectures, and conference talks and it was alright, but something I reached for out of necessity. Once I started watching videos out of curiosity I slowly ended up finding channels around my hobbies that filled my feed with pretty interesting stuff. There's good content out there beyond dense lectures, but also a lot of crap. I built my curated list of channels making videos worth watching and rarely watch something outside of those. Similarly to music discovery, once you find what you like keep an eye on neighboring artists. I stay curious, but I'm quick to reject.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoNormies who can't figure out the 3 buttons it takes to use ublock pay for such things. Its a tax on not being smart? I'm mostly kidding, but I just use ublock and I've never considered buying youtube premium. Try harder google?
- Bender 9mo agoAlso HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services” People became used to getting a thing for free then it slowly enshittified over time into the current blend of grift and bait. They also strongly promote via shorts the very things they discouraged because sex sells. Now they are promoting AI generated bait. As such they deserve any and all vitriol in my opinion. I personally would never pay for that hot mess. I watch a few popular channels because I can but probably not much longer. Eventually I will just watch the videos people copy over to Rumble until that platform follows the grift patterns of YT. It won't be long.
- stbtrax 9mo agodoesn’t work on iPad or iOS? Also not worth my time given how cheap it is
- IG_Semmelweiss 9mo agoi'm the same as you, but YT has started to place its content behind sign-in wall Anon usage + uBlock and VPN, is a dead man walking
- drnick1 9mo ago> YT has started to place its content behind sign-in wall Any examples of that?
- wpm 9mo agoyt-dlp has to have you install an entire JS runtime for it to function now.
- IG_Semmelweiss 8mo agoTry opening any monetized video behind a VPN service, with a clean browser cache, and not using chrome . 50/50 it will play, without logging in 1st
- driverdan 9mo agoI'm not OP but I pay because I want to support content creators. It also removes ads from players that don't have blocking, such as Roku. Of course there are other ways to support creators such as donating and buying swag. I do that too.
- joelthelion 9mo agoBy paying for youtube, you're supporting Google and walled gardens more than creators, I'd argue.
- wilg 9mo agoNot financially, since creators get 55% of YouTube premium fees.
- joelthelion 9mo agoThat's very short-sighted though. The money is forcing everyone (users and creators) to stay on YouTube, no matter how big of a cut they take or how much crap they throw at us as users.
- pseudohadamard 9mo agoLook at it the other way round, Google takes nearly half of their income, where they're putting a huge amount of time and energy into creating content while Google's contribution is hosting the data on a server. It also reinforces the YouTube hostage situation where content creators can't afford to leave the abusive relationship because they'll lose most of the income that Google isn't already taking off them.
- wilg 9mo agoIf that's all of Google's contribution then creators should have no problem hosting the data themselves and keeping the difference for themselves.
- sidrag22 9mo ago
- madaxe_again 9mo agoBecause it’s $6 a month where I live and at that price it’s easier than any faffing or arms race with Adblock.
- drnick1 9mo agouBlock Origin updates its lists automatically. If you want to spend $6, just donate to uBlock instead and never see an ad again on 99% of the Internet.
- codecutter 9mo agouBlock origin does not accept donations. I would have loved to donate to them, but they don't.
- bluehex 9mo agoI pay mainly because a really like being able to play the videos in iOS pip background mode. I do find it crazy that Apple allows that OS level feature to be paywalled by apps.