Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw__away7391 | Hacker News Reader

I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube, nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads. The content being created for YouTube is fantastic, you can easily watch news from all over the world, conference talks, lectures, interviews, in-depth documentaries and deep dive analysis that blows away anything you'll ever see on any mainstream platform. One particular strength is that creators don't seem too bound to producing videos for specific length of time. There are literally informative mini-documentaries 90 seconds long while others might go on for 4 hours and they cover every imaginable topic. This is definitely the last subscription I'd give up if I had to.

View on HN

The hate for youtube is understandable when you consider how much of it Google changes without listening to anyone. They know they have an effectively monopoly position on video hosting and thus just do whatever they want.

They'll let their system ban whoever it wants, only letting a human review things if the person is sufficiently large/well-connected. They change their policies on a whim regardless of impact on people making a living off Youtube, same with demonetization, they also continue to allow content-ID and DMCA to be abused and have made search completely useless.

People are still using YouTube not because they like it, but simply because of the existing network effect and wanting to support their preferred creators. Thus it makes total sense why people would be willing to pay creators but not Google.

I think the constant obnoxious YT Premium ads are a big reason for the animosity. That and that it doesn't feel like an option. They really increased the amount of ads so it fells like an extortion - pay or suffer.

Most YT ads are abhorrent and incredibly repetitive. Awful music and a piercing voice. I very quickly develop loathing for the brand I see on YT ads.

The worst adverts on youtube are those long pseudo-documentary ads about the unusual backstory of some radical new inexpensive device that is going to change some industry and doctors/oil companies would prefer you didn't know about. The ones with the AI voices.

> I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube, nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads.

Much of the “fantastic” content I do watch on YouTube has sponsored content in the video. Mostly I avoid YouTube.

correct, but also for me, much of the usefulness of youtube is for looking up how to do something quick. This has been ruined by google emphasizing longer vids to up the “engagement” aka add time… and so now all of youtube has become the video equivalent of a recipe site…

I also love Youtube (I've learned a staggering amount from it), but maybe qualify your "anyone" here ;-)

> nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads

Assuming you mean the no-ads-plus-music offer, in the UK that is £12.99 a month. So the yearly cost is worth more than a whole month of food for me, and I don't eat badly (I just shop well).

A month's worth of food for a single adult is objectively not a very small amount of money, spread over a year.

Me, I skip the ads, for now.

> pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads

because it doesn't do away with _all_ the ads: every video still has the video maker themselves talking about their 'sponsor' for at least a minute, reminding us to 'like and subscribe' for at least ten seconds, and a patreon scroll of users that have paid extra for another three minutes

The Firefox addon Sponsorblock blocks almost 100% of those ads. Together with uBlock Origin, I have an almost ad-free Youtube experience.

FYI - it's not a "Firefox addon", it's just an addon and it exists for Chromium based browsers as well. And I agree that it's fantastic.

These are two different things.

Youtube ads can potentially found in all videos and you don't really have a choice because there's no practical alternative to Youtube. So you either pay or use an adblocker (while it works). There's value in Youtube and I can easily see why would someone pay for the ad-free subscription.

Then again creators who choose to advertise or promote commercial products in their videos have a fraction of the leverage that Youtube has. If you don't like them, simply don't watch those channels and find something else. By choosing to promote products they'll implicitly choose to filter out some segments of their potential audience, and that's their choice. Youtube has nothing to do with that, they would place promotions in their videos no matter what service they use as their video outlet.

It costs money to run YouTube and it costs creators money to make content. Some of them are trying to make a living doing it. If you don't want to pay and you don't want to see ads, how do you expect the service to function?

Literally 3-6 taps (to fast forward 20-50 seconds) on a phone. Two-Three clicks using the web. Grabbing the remote, pressing 3 times "right" and "ok" for a TV running YouTube.

Creators can't live from YouTube alone (yt premium makes this better afaik, but you still get paid per watch time, which can go against your content or ethics), so they do sponsored ads integrated into their videos. For some the yt-alone revenue is only 20-40% of the total.

And how would that behavior change on a non-Youtube/non-Google video website? Do you think content creators will no longer ask for sponsorship??

Not every video, but I do take your point. Some patreon supported channels even have no ads at all.

What’s YouTube supposed to do about that?

YouTube censorship works really well whenever it hears swear words or god forbid you show a bit too much of human body, but apparently 10 to 60 seconds of ad crap is undetectable to them.

Demonetize the shit out of the video, on subsequent offense demonetize whole channel.

The whole in-video sponsorship happened because of mass demonetization in the first place.

Pay their creators not to insert ads into their content.

stop pretending that paying them extra money removes all ads would help

"Removes _some_ ads!" probably wouldnt sell as many subscriptions though haha

It’s not some ads. It’s like 90% of ads.

Whenever I use someone else’s account or am not logged in I’m shocked by how ad filled YouTube is. Easily my most automatic subscription and worth every penny.

The creators typically have one 30 second spot where they often do a humorous riff. Not that big a deal.

Sounds like you value youtube premium because of what it doesn't show more than what it does.

Google: "Pay the monthly fee to avoid getting slapped in the face with a wet fish."

You: "worth every penny!"

What? We’re talking about the ads so that’s what I’m talking about here.

Sometimes this site is obnoxious.

What?

You went from talking about ads to calling this site obnoxious? First of all, if you found my comment obnoxious, it's not "this site" that's obnoxious, it's this user!

My comment was mild. I find the increase in ads on youtube to be obnoxious. You find value in Premium, because you don't suffer ads. It's a fair call to wonder whether the value you find comes from "not seeing obnoxious levels of ads" vs anything else, such as the quality of service offered under premium.

End of the day: my criticism is directed at Google, for encouraging clickbait spammer content; increasing intrusive ads and charging too much in order to not suffer those increasing ads.

This is like complaining electric trucks aren't really electric because the lawnmower you transport in it still takes gas

I'd like to take this paid option, but for some reason the official YouTube app on my Google Pixel is broken - the screen overlay never goes away, I can't see comments on videos, and trying to go to a channel takes me to "An error occurred RETRY" screen.

Unfortunately, I don't think Google does any kind of support for their YouTube app on their phones. Casual googling brought me to some forum posts that didn't seem helpful, and I've heard too many horror stories about Google support to put much effort into this route.

Quite unfortunate. Other options (NewPipe, Firefox Android + uBlock Origin) have their own problems. I might try to turn channels into podcasts and listen to them from my podcast player. Maybe that'll work.

If your phone is otherwise normal, clearing the app's cache and data is usually a good way to get things working again for cases like "this app obviously must not be doing this on other people's phones"

Clearing the storage actually worked!!! Thanks so much!!

I pay for premium and more than half of the time I just use the browser version. Maybe slightly less snappy but it is fully featured and works.

What are your top gripes with NewPipe, for your purposes?

Youtube, when compared to any other streaming / video on demand / film tv services etc, has by far the most insane value proposition.

The sheer amount of content on there for the price is well worth paying. I use adblocks everywhere, I use pihole, I am really strong on that. But I do use Youtube a lot, and it is only fair that I pay the price. It is very reasonably priced.

YouTube Premium supplanted traditional media a long time ago. Considering it includes Music, it's my favourite subscription too.

Google bought YouTube, kept it low ads, and ran everyone else on the internet out of business. People would watch hunt you if you said they would ever add a lot of ads, but then they saturated it with ads. That is a globally-scale, economy transforming bait and switch move to gain a near monopoly on online videos. So: some people are mad

>I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube

It's still a Google product that does Google things. If you hate Google things, making an exception for YouTube is saying your standards have a price tag attached.

Polarization plays better than nuance.

What nuance would you want? YouTube is the most similar to Google Search of all Google products in regards to 'doing things people hate about Google', beyond maybe Android. The product has been trend-chasing for years trying to do what Twitch, Instagram and Tiktok did all to sell more ads and data to in turn become more profitable, because we all know a few clear tech guides without ads are not turning YouTube anywhere as profitable as another 30 second short or 10-minute pog-face clickbait for kids who somehow have access to their parents' credit card or primed to become the perfect future consumers.

It's been a very, very long time since YouTube has been very profitable for individuals who aren't playing Google's game or started before that time. Practically any new channel is clout-chasing, appealing to kids or unsatisfied adults in some form, with few able to replicate a momentary success if not following these tactics. Enshittification of the platform has been going on for at least a decade now and Google isn't showing any signs of stopping. A few people making themselves believe "oh well it isn't so bad because tech guides" may as well say "Google Search isn't so bad because I can specify the website and aggressively avoid ads".

But YouTube is the good guy because it.. centralizes content creators and soft-locks them into Google's desired format, be it now or in the future? What, do people think if WEI succeeds, YouTube won't be a future candidate for whatever funny business Google decides on next?

That is more detail of the same earlier position, which is that someone who "generally avoid[s]" Google products actually "hate[s] Google things," and that anyone who "generally avoid[s]" Google products is a sell-out ("your standards have a price tag attached") for not avoiding a specific Google product. All OP said was that not all Google products are undesirable, and your reply completely mischaracterized what he or she said -- turning general avoidance into hatred -- and then attacked its own strawman for hypocrisy. That's polarization: if you're not on Team A, then you must be on Team B, and never the twain shall meet. Giving more examples people like you hate about a company doesn't really advance the discussion.

OP doesn't like many products from a particular company, but does appreciate one of them. There isn't a lot to argue with there.

This is exactly how I use YouTube. My biggest issue is the sponsored ads that get in the way of me paying not to have ads. I hope they find a solution for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com