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Comment by _V_ | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, still not budging. They keep shoving multiple obnoxious ads every few minutes in the video. It is the same as the predatory monetization approach in the (mobile) gaming industry where authors makes the original product so awful deliberately only so they can shove subscription down your throat. Basically selling you solution for a problem they created.

Screw that mentality, not paying them. And I don't mind paying for a service btw - I have a premium Odysee for example.

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Agreed, it makes a difference how a service came to be in its current state. The present offerings are the product of a long decline after years of deliberate enshitification. Don't support the rent seekers at google.

I don’t want to give Google my credit card, because in case of any problem/litigation, they can take away my Gmail. They’ve painted themselves in a corner with routinely deleting accounts for political reasons.

Yup, that's the other part of my problem with YT/Google: No support.

If something goes wrong, you are just SOL. No recourse, nothing and nobody can really help you.

How about stopping using Gmail then?

Switching from a 0.028% probability to 0.0028% isn’t worth more hassle than just having ads every day, all the time.

Aside from the issue here, and the PRIVACY mess, it's the best thing since email was invented.

Availability, universally accepted, free (to the product: you), large storage, easy to use.

There is no serious competition, and I say this as a Hotmail user since well before Larry and Sergey opened their doors.

I have a vanity domain which MX's to Gmail so I can move it to another service _when_ they bumrush me, but I don't want to have that happen so I keep my account in good standimg.

Other than self-hosting or a paid service, do you have a suggestion for an alternative?

I know I'm not the OP, but I'm genuinely interested in this.

I don't know about good free alternative with support etc. That's also why I'm paying ~50$/year for a mailserver hosting - I've moved from gmail to just that and so far I'm quite happy.

Maybe someday I will spin up my mailserver also, but for now this is quite good balance between convenience & price for me.

AS far as I'm concerned, the best thing since email was invented is Fastmail. The non-monetary costs of using gmail over a longer period are far higher than paying money for Fastmail. Most importantly, I know I can rely on my email.

Dunno about you all, but I refuse to leave my email on American servers. Privacy doubleplusungood.

Not sure if it's true, but what you're writing makes it sound like you feel entitled to use their product for free. Not a compelling argument.

I don't. That's why I explicitly wrote that I don't mind paying for a service and also gave an example of another service I'm paying for... See the very last sentence in my post.

edit: To make it really clear, Odysee is not the only thing I'm paying for. I'm also paying for example for Apple Family, HBO GO, Spotify, mailhosting etc. I'm also sponsoring SponsorBlock extension. As I said: I don't have a problem with paying for a product or service. I have a big problem when someone deliberately and needlesly cripples a product just so they can sell you a solution to the (unnecessary) problem they artificially created. I mean: Background play behind a paywall? Really? Is that the bar that we think is acceptable these days?

I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter that you're paying for other services, or your taxes, or for your groceries. If you're using that particular service for free in a manner that's not intended, and you justify it by saying that you don't like the way they run things... then that's a questionable moral position, and not a compelling argument.

I'm not a big fan of everything YouTube does either, but this stance of yours bothers me, too.

> I have a big problem when someone deliberately and needlesly cripples a product just so they can sell you a solution to the (unnecessary) problem they artificially created

The whole of YouTube is artificially created. It wouldn't be there without the people who run it, and they get to decide how they want to monetize. You can take it or leave it, or say "screw your rules, I'm using this anyway". Just realize that this is not necessarily read as some form of rebellion against the man or whatever, but instead as a neat excuse to help yourself to some free content.

The content on YouTube you're watching also would not exist without the people who create it. It would be nice if you gave back to at least some of them, somehow, in a way that's independent from YouTube. That would be a more interesting and constructive position to take.

(edited spelling)

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