"Profit is inherently evil" is a difficult point of view to have on this venture captial forum.
Rent seeking is a form of making profit. So of course they are making a profit. The question is whether they are making a profit in order to fund their operations as was suggested by the person I was replying to, or if they are "rent seeking".
According to wikipedia "Rent-seeking is the effort to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth."
That is why I said they "at some point they decided to turn the screws and really ramp up advertising". The claim I am making is a direct reply to the person who said they are not rent seeking, they are merely seeking profit to fund their operations. I am making the claim that they have moved beyond that to seeking profit without creating additional value in their service.
Now one can argue whether or not I am correct, but what was never under question was whether or not they are making a profit. The only thing being questioned was the purpose and result of that profit seeking.
So? They're a business, what do you expect?
The previous commenter was saying they're doing more than just hosting video, which is true. If you want to create a nonprofit for video hosting, go ahead, but don't blame YouTube for turning a profit.
YouTube got to be YouTube because Google sank enormous amounts of money into it for no return for a decade. Indeed, YouTube probably still hasn't broken even if including those costs.
I do pay money for Nebula, because they seem like their hearts are in the right place. I pay about $60, 70 a month to various podcast and video creators directly.
I don't use adblock, vanced, and sponsorblock because I'm cheap. It's because I don't like what YouTube as a whole is doing with incentivising clickbait and maximising revenue above just being an unobtrusive platform.
I whitelist Alec at Technology Connections, Steve Mould, a couple of others, from the ad blocks, because they aren't on Nebula yet. They should be.
If you really didn't like that, you'd stop watching YouTube.
If the cost of a product exceeds its value to you, you just don’t buy it. It doesn’t mean you should get it for free.