Advertisers use their dollars to influence and make statements, also forcing stupid age restrictions just because someone swears.
It's 1984 in 2023.
What makes you think it's right to be entitled to a free service?
You don't want to pay.
You don't want ads.
So ... then what?
This way, you wouldn't have to pay (which is what the parent comment wants). But you would still have an incentive to pay, because if not enough people did, the content you liked might might not get made.
People posted out of passion, because there was no money. It was an intrinsic filtering to weed out profit seeking.
I don't like the idea of creators getting paid, generally speaking. Information should be free.
I don't see any difference between rent seeking and YT click bait regurgitating existing knowledge that's easily accessible
Something has to pay for the infra costs.
Either tax money, ads or subscription fees. Choose one
It saves me money for actual physical goods.
So... Which do YOU want to pay? I'll choose to escalate the ad-adblocker-block adblocker war. Winning so far.
There are always people in the comments taking the side of the company with arguments like "they need to make money" - sure, i'm all for capitalism, free markets and profits, but I use my right to whine when a company changes the status quo for the worse (from my POV). Public outcry is a way to pressure them to either keep the current situation, or think of something else.
For companies, it's Marketing 101 that if you can't or don't want to sell what people want, you can always brainwash or beat[0] people into "wanting" the thing you want to sell. But we do not have to take such treatment silently, or without a fight. By resisting, we raise the costs of anti-consumer moves ever so slightly. Maybe, sometimes, just enough to make the company - or the next one to follow - rethink if the change is really worth doing after all.
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[0] - Metaphorically, of course. But when a company cancels the very product people like the most, in order to force them to use an inferior product, and knowing full well none of the competitors will come up with a replacement (because they're all in lock step, what isn't profitable for one won't be for another, etc.) - being on a receiving end of that does feel like being beaten into submission.
It's not in the legal sense, you do get a "product" for it. But it didn't take me long to realize that even paying for Youtube Premium, I was better off not logging into my account and just using NewPipe.
I really think the only reason to pay for Premium is if you want to donate money to Youtube.
So you don't want to watch ads and don't want to pay for premium. What do you propose Youtube should do to make money to run the platform?
Google is rich. Their products have stagnated. They have no user support to reconcile mistaken flags or strikes.
It's anti user, the platform should be pro user. I'd like to see dark patterns pay their price and become deincentivized.