This just in, people don’t like ads. At all. Most people.
It is time to find a new business model that works. I’m not smart enough to know what that is so that you don’t piss off users, but whoever figures it out will be a billionaire.
I would pay for premium IF it was a reasonable price.
I don’t want shitty music bundled or whatever fuck else they are calling it now JUST youtube.
AND here’s the big one, I want the fucking downvote count back and sponsor skip. Most videos have ads and fucking sponsor segments which are also fucking ads. I’m not paying to watch that.
And downvote count is absolutely crucial to be able to detect bullshit videos quickly.
Google is offering a shit product and asking a premium price. Fuck em.
Back in the early days of youtube, I didn’t mind them. Just a few ads here and there. Nowadays, the internet is barely usable unless you have an adblocker.
I don’t mind ads in the sidebar or on that little banner across the bottom of the screen sometimes. Its when the ads completely cover the content I’m trying to watch/view and/or start auto playing at obnoxious volume that I get annoyed. (Also fuck people on metered connections right?)
Maybe like a subscription where people could pay a fee to avoid ads?
The trouble with YT Premium is how much they’re charging for it.
We used a VPN to get Ukrainian family YTP for a fraction of the price they charge here in the UK. We pay something like £4 a month now for both of our accounts. That would be the better part of £20 a month if we’d done it legit. Fuck that noise.
Sure, it comes with YT Music, but I’ve literally never used that. I have Apple Music and an iPod. So £20 a month JUST TO REMOVE ADS.
Nah, fuck ‘em.
That is absolutely a solution. But what I’m talking about is a way to monetize while keeping the service free but without showing ads.
This is the billion dollar idea. If not trillion.
There is no such thing as a free service.
People need to eat, bills need to be paid, shelter needs to be provided and unless people can have these at no expense and create things for pure passion & share for others to enjoy then they need the means to pay for these things.
The internet has whittled this down to a few basic models:
- Pay the service directly for the content (subscriptions or 1 time purchases)
- ‘Free’ content and they serve you ads which they are paid for by companies trying to sell something to you
- ‘Free’ content and they sell every bit of data they can scrape from you to companies which are again, trying to sell something to you.
If you could find a way to do anything without having to pay for our human needs then would it be a trillion dollar idea or would money be meaningless now when people wouldnt need it to live & enjoy their lives?
I pay for YouTube and use FreeTube and NewPipe. I try to pay for whatever services I use. I think this is the way, either pay or let the ads play. I do this because the YouTube app is trash for many reasons mostly having to do with trying to funnel me to the money making bits.
There are greedy corporations making the user experience worse and doing everything they can to wring every penny they can. Ultimately, I attribute this to the wall street investor model. A company can be making money and still be losing because their revenues shrank from the prior quarter. That is a broken system that will only eat itself. That being said, people gotta eat and that includes the janitors, etc… at Google.
Point is, its a mixed bag. There are people on the other end making the product you are using, AND there is a soul sucking company making it worse for both their customers and their workers/creators. To be clear, there is something to be said about how poorly Google supports their creators. In many ways, they are taking advantage of the creators that use their platform. How is it that Google is making so much money in ads, but creators have to open Patreons?
I still don’t think we should just expect stuff for free.
Tangentially, I need to be better about helping support the open source projects I use, especially the smaller maintainers, to be honest, but I do send to a few and I encourage everyone to do so as well as much as they can.
edit: Grammar
Most people
Then how did google make money?
Firefox for Android, AdBlock, Firefox -> Chrome user agent fake plugin. Works very well without any ads or issues.
This supports PiP which is YouTube premium feature.
I would jump ship instantly to something better if the content would be there.
I create content that goes into YouTube. I generate a tiny bit of revenue from that. I have no say into how YouTube treats my viewers. If you watch the ads, awesome, I get some money. If not, I’m just glad you watched the video.
The majority of content on the platform is made up of channels my size and smaller. Most of us are getting paid pennies.
But YouTube doesn’t care about us. They want to appease the larger studios.
Maybe its due to my age, but I use YT for tutorials on diy or fixing shit. I get 20s in, then whammo, ad. Just as the guy is focusing in on the area I need to see. I am watching a 5min video and 2min of ads… it is ridiculous.
Don’t forget that if you have to rewind a part to see something the creator blew past that you needed to see and you get another two ads. Fuck that noise.
Allegiance to Google is what’s ridiculous, they haven’t deserved to exist since their IPO and the parasite they are needs to be pulled off the internet
Eventually, the users will rebel and just stop watching, and then the video creators will follow, because if nobody’s watching, then there will be no reason to create on YouTube.
You know this won’t happen, but I like your optimism
If you can’t have some sort of optimism, you might as well just go ahead and commit suicide because life’s not worth living.
Google being an ass about alternative YouTube clients is somewhat dumb but they likely prefer to control user experience. They’re a for profit entity so it shouldn’t be that surprising. Google kicking users that cost them money is not dumb.
Or maybe Google should just improve the experience so people want to pay for a premium subscription. But instead of investing in a better user experience they’d rather intentionally make it worse to drive consumers to pay to unshitify it. But instead they’re blowing loads of cash which could be used to invest in the platform and turn even more profit, but they’re using it to fight a war with their customers for short term profits. They are dumb.
Yup. I’ve considered paying for YouTube premium, but:
- it’s too expensive for how much I watch
- the YouTube app kinda sucks - NewPipe is nice to use (adjust volume and brightness by sliding a finger)
- it’s unclear how much creators get from my subscription
- there’s still sponsorships and whatnot
Nebula gets rid of the ads and sponsorships, and my understanding is creators get a larger cut vs YouTube. Grayjay allows me to follow multiple streaming services and has the volume/brightness management bits as well. I’m willing to pay for both of them because they bring value, YouTube doesn’t.
You can fix the problem by just…. Not using YouTube.
Name another platform that has anyway near the similar popularity or usability (usability on third party apps)
Irrelevant. If I don’t like something, I don’t use it. If I do like it, I don’t complain about it.
