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Honestly they could have just left youtube alone, let it generate ad revenue in return for hosting videos, and that's it. No need for youtube red, youtube go, "advertiser friendly" crap. Just keep running youtube and use that revenue to fund other projects.

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Apparently, Google disagrees. YouTube hosts a massive amount of video, so they may be right.

I actually don't think YouTube Red was necessarily a bad idea: People get to skip ads, and play videos offline/with their phone locked. We use that money to pay creators and fund premium content.

To counter, if you want to support the creators, it's better to subscribe via Vessel or Patreon that it is to get a YouTube Red subscription...

I've heard a few times already that Google isn't actually making a revenue off of YouTube and rather just paying to keep it alive. No idea, if that's true, though. There's also the consideration that having a YouTube-account gets you into the whole Google-ecosystem, so might actually pay off on other ends.

Still doesn't explain, though, why they keep making such bad investments...

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