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> But what then do you think is a realistic alternative?

Not my department. I'm perfectly happy being a parasite. I used to watch Twitch every now and then. Twitch introduced server side ads and made ad-blocking unreliable and annoying - so i stopped using twitch.

My life doesn't depend on youtube, and if they decide to shut me out or the platform stops existing, that's fine with me. Maybe other video platforms can try out other models instead of that effective monopoly google has on online video currently.

I've also already said that I tolerate non-obnoxious ads. But looking at the rest of the web, it doesn't seem to go in that direction, so I'll keep blocking until they kick me out.

Twitch is still perfectly fine with streamlink. There's a 15 second loading screen where ads are meant to go (only at the start of your stream), but you don't see any ads.

mpv + youtube-dl also works fine.

I pay $10/mo for YouTube Premium, and my expectation is that I will not have to sit through any ads. A sponsorship is an ad, which violates that expectation, so I use SponsorBlock to skip them.

For channels that I watch regularly, I contribute to their Patreon if they have one. I shouldn't have to sit through a sponsorship segment in addition to that.

If you pay for YouTube Premium, the creators of monetized videos you watch get paid an order of magnitude more than with just YouTube ads.

"order of magnitude" implies 10x. That's great news for small / independent creators! Can someone point me to a source for this information?

It's hard to compare apples to apples, as ad revenue is based on amount of ads shown and your premium subscription is divvied up among your most watched creators based on watchtime [1]

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7060016?hl=en

Great link! Do you think it is fair to say the YouTube Premium payout model is similar to the music streaming platform, Spotify?

At the risk of nerd sniping myself, thinking deeper, I wonder if people who sign up for YouTube Premium do less random surfing on YouTube and instead focus on a few channels they love? That would _further_ concentrate their payouts. If true, then the 10x figure sounds reasonable.

Nope. Spotify divides the whole subscription revenue per content's share in total time being played, thus it doesn't matter if you listen exclusively to some garage band - your money would go to whatever pop is now topping.

Well not really because you up the count for the garage band you're listening to. Quick calculation shows this model gives more influence on the repartirion of money to those who listen to the most music, even though they pay the same (as compared to YouTube's that gives the same budget to everyone)

Quick calculation shows that infinitesimal multiplied by a number is still infinitesimal, while YT's model is a real number multiplied by an integer.

Not really:

Let - p := subscription price

- N := number of subscribers

- P:= total spotify money = p * N

In first approximation, let us consider that all subscribers listen to the same amount of music per month

- v := number of minutes of music per subscriber per month

- V := total number of music listened to = v * N

Then, by listening to a minute of an artist, the amount you add to that artist revenue is approximately

P / V = p / v

Which is a fraction of a non-infinitesimal number (in that first approximation)

You got confused by a fact that an infinitesimal number times an infinite number can very much be real

It's not possible to give that specific information

The reason being that people in the businessy genre already get 10x (~$10CPM) what a gaming channel (~$1CPM) gets because there's more advertisers and less channels. You'd need to know the source channel

Its not entirely the channels fault. If youtube paid creators a higher share on monetized videos and didn't keep changing the ranking and terms there would be less need to add alternate forms of monetization.

Heck, youtube could even build in a patron feature much like twitch has with subscriptions.

> Heck, youtube could even build in a patron feature

Isn't this basically YouTube Membership[1]?

[1] https://www.lifewire.com/how-do-youtube-channel-memberships-...

Realistic alternative is others will pick up the slack

Mass market viewers don't care, adblockers get ad free content, creator gets their slice. We all win

For about 20 years most everything was supported on nothing but some person's own desire to put themselves out into the world. This meant spending out of their own pocket if necessary. If hosting became too much of a bandwidth issue for them to be able to pay for hosting they would release it as a torrent and it would become shared and distributed peer2peer or they'd throw it up on a free file share and the it became the file sharing platform's problem to deal with the bandwidth and try to collect (typically through member-only "premium download speeds").

In the past 10 years or so quality has largely gone down and annoyances like ads and sponsor shoutouts have gone up to the extent "Sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends" is an actual meme. There are very, very few content creators I feel are worth supporting. This ends up being a bit classist as mostly people with enough personal cash flow and free time can afford to become full-time content creators but by and large that's already kind of the case if you look at the people who become full-time content creators. But I personally feel that if your content is more of the "popcorn" variety that people use to fill their day but don't actually value compared to something people do value then the world at large isn't missing out. If enough people felt they would miss out - they'd pay to keep it around.

There are plenty of content creators I watch where I would not be all that sad if they vanished and they stopped creating content - because I use their content to fill gaps of boredom in my day and not because I place any significant value in their content. Then there are a few I absolutely do value and I already support them when possible. I assume ones without a method to directly support them are OK with losing some revenue to ad-blockers and the like. I have absolutely let personal opportunities of collecting cash slide past me because I weighed the effort to collect it to be greater than it was worth so I assume the reason they haven't opened up a way to donate to them directly is for similar reasons.

I consider ads to be psychological warfare and something that should (but never will) be illegal if they are designed to be emotionally manipulative in any way. If a dry, boring informercial doesn't inspire you to buy their product then it probably isn't worth buying howdy. I feel absolutely nothing bad about blocking them.

In fact I do pay for yt premium, yet still get these kinds of ads.

So much for that misplaced and invalid attempt at moralizing.

"are they so terrible?" and "what's the alternative?" are not my problem to answer, and I don't even have to agree they are valid questions that someone has to answer.

I do not accept the premise that the only way content can exist is if advertisers pay for it. That's a false dichotomy. There is no such either/or choice.

I will happily live in a world that only has content that was either fully paid for by purchasing copies or subscriptions, or given to the world for free.

You attempted to paint anyone using this software or anyone complaining about the ads as somehow morally lacking. I say, if you don't understand why anyone would give away something for free, and only think of the consumers as ungrateful parasites, then I think that says something worse about you than what you tried to say about anyone else.

> I will happily live in a world that only has content that was either fully paid for by purchasing copies or subscriptions, or given to the world for free.

How do you feel about DRM to make sure content is only accessible to those who paid for it?

It's a good way to ensure that I will never pay for their products, and will enthusiastically support any competitor who respects their customers.

I'm perfectly fine with businesses that use intrusive ads going out of business - none of this is essential to my well being. The onus is on them to find revenue gathering methods that don't suck, not me.

And before you say "but creators have to make money too" - independent art gets created just fine without capitalistic motives, and I vastly prefer the patreon model, or just paying up front for larger content (documentaries, games, films etc).

(Although in this particular case, I'm pretty fine with the sponsor method with most of the creators I watch on youtube - there's definitely a line where it could get overbearing, but for the most part it's pretty easy to skip if you want and the brand they're shilling still gets shown to you over and over again so the advertisers aren't really losing out).

(Also chiming in with the "I do pay for YouTube premium" gang as well).

One thing I absolutely despise about "creators have to make money" is when some of those creators actually use YouTube to cram their shitty music down my throat via ads while I'm playing some other, completely different music that I actually chose.

It's grotesque that they think this is an ideal way to promote fan appreciation. I mean, the music styles don't even sync: You could be listening to Bach, with a playback history that clearly shows a preference for classical music, and some idiotic teen pop song by some attention-desperate, barely known singer starts playing via ad, which if you don't click to skip it (say you're in the kitchen with your hands dirty while listening to your interrupted Bach) will play FULLY for its entire 3 to 4 minute duration. Just bloody stupid...

What is the difference between running this code and simply clicking ahead on the video timeline past the ad? How is it any different from recording a show on tape and just fastforwarding past the commercials?

Youtube doesn't really let you do that. If you're watching a video you chose and some shitty little ad gets crammed in there to screw with your enjoyment, its own little yellow timeline appears that you have to sit through until you can click to skip ahead after X seconds.

apparently the average viewer spends 41 minutes per day on youtube, so that's about 20 hours per month. 1 dollar per hour is pretty cheap when it comes to entertainment, no?

I already pay $24 NZD for YouTube Premium. I'm simply using SponsorBlock to get the actual experience that payment implies - no ads.

Psst. We're trying to keep YouTube from turning into cable TV. Please don't interfere.

Were you the guy I was having this exact comparison conversation with last night over bourbon and ginger ales?

I'm terrified we're already well on the other side of the Rubicon

Easy: a downloader that makes it look like you've watched those stupid commercials, but you actually haven't and you're back to the original video. Let the sponsors beware.

Until they see they get very little ROI and stop advertising that way. It's not like people sponsoring aren't looking to see what these channels do for them and just spend blindly...

In the 1940s and 1950s radio programs and eventually television shows were sponsored by advertisers. soap operas get their name for being vehicles for soap companies. Off the top of my head Fitch's soap company was a big advertiser in the 40s. Another big advertiser in the forties and fifties was rexall.

I don't know what the return on investment was, I always figured they did it as a way to show that they supported the arts.

Unilever was a sponsor of early TV dramas in the UK

Ah yes, Unilever. I always loved the dissonance in messaging between owning both the Dove and Axe product lines.

I've long known this, but not how they used it to advertise -- was it product placement, pre-roll, being the only mid-roll adverts??

Each show i listen to generally will have a primary sponser, who writes the show "headline song" and generally that sponsor will write lyrics to make that a jingle that has to do with their product.

Then you get the intro to the show, and sometimes a product spot. Then the show starts, and depending on the format (half hour, multi-part 12 minute, etc) you may get a mid-roll and finally at the end a final sponsor message, plus the studio (like CBS) would pitch other shows on their network, and the star of the show would also have their current movies and other productions pitched at the end, as well.

Check out Richard Rogue on OTRR or archive.org for both styles, the mid-roll and the post-intro roll with jingle, it varies depending on year of production. Their main sponsor was Fitch, as far as i can tell.

I'm 100% not going to buy whatever they're selling. If anything I'm less likely to buy something that's advertised to me. I've specifically stopped using services/products if I notice their ads too much.

So who is benefiting from me watching sponsor segments? Not me, not the content creator, not the brand.

I just skip them manually though tbh, haven't gotten around to automating it.

> I expect everything for free, then that’s both unrealistic and parasitic.

There are plenty of youtubers who do videos as a hobby with no money and the videos still are amazing. Then there are plenty of youtubers who only make 10 minute videos so they can get as many ad breaks as possible and add sponsor ads in the videos and the video quality and content is just terrible.