I learn so much from the people who spend hours and hours making videos every month that I am more than happy to pay a measly $13 or whatever it is every month to YouTube.
They're an ad company. They pay the creators per impression even if you block the ads. Blocking ads harms Google, not the content producers.
Spotify suggestions and playlists weren't a seller feature for me for years. Maybe I'm missing out on a few podcasts.
Adblocking Google is morally right.
All ads should be blocked. I do not consume ads, and am not interested in paying a ransom to hide them.
Ad companies have been tilting the agreement attention for content ever more in their favor in aggressive and privacy harming ways. They long ago broke any moral standing.
The content creators need to seek a better deal, they’re getting screwed by Google too.
Ad supporters talk like blocking ads is literal theft, which is absolutely laughable. It's further away from theft than piracy, which is also in no way literal theft.
If I'm watching traditional non-demand television, and I go to the bathroom or change the channel during an ad, am I stealing from the network or the show? Hell no, that's ridiculous.
I would agree with you it's ok if there was no way to _otherwise_ pay for the service. If they push a only ads-supported version, and I have no choice but see ads, and I don't consent to the impact of ads on my brain, it makes a case for blocking ads being ethically correct.
But since there is a choice on how to pay, I find reasoning is no longer ethically right. You can choice to pay with your attention and brain, or to pay with hard cold cash, so the argument of ads being shoved down your brain no longer holds. You can choose to not see ads and pay for the service, and you chose to steal.
And you can make the argument that stealing is ok since you steal from the bad guys, but then you don't get to complain when others may steal from you - we're all "the bad guy" for somebody else
Me taking a copy of Shrek 2 at the local store and not paying for it is theft: the store can no longer benefit from Shrek 2.
Google can re-send the exact same bytes to someone else. All I've costed them is what it costs to send those bytes over. But then, would you consider going into a store, loitering for two hours, taking the sellers attention (therefore, costing them time that they cannot use to sell things to other customers) then leaving without buying anything theft ? Most reasonable people would say no. We'd all agree it's a dick move, but since corporations are not people, it doesn't matter.
I think the sooner we move from ads-supported models to pay-per-use like Netflix, the better we are - those that can afford will consume the best content, and the rest will stick to public domain.
The ad industry is a scourge on humanity, and its gormless defenders are willing accomplices.
Google did everything in their power to force themselves into every aspect of our lives and leaving no alternatives, or destroying them, or buying them. Now they get to deal with the consequences
Otherwise you're just rationalising freeloader behaviour.
I'm saying Google _deserves_ to have freeloaders milking them for every bit they can. So does Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon...
The content creators I support get their money on Patreon or whatever fundraising platforms they use. Same things for my favorite journals. The others ? Well, I don't care enough about them to think that I would pay for them. Maybe others will. And if they don't, well, they'll stop.
Why not get your content from ad-free platforms?
It would be, if Google didn't have a chokehold on most of the internet. Sure, Nebula exists, I can watch three creators there, woohoo. Let me go on Dailymotion too for those sweet 2005 videos.
Google did everything in their power to force themselves into every aspect of our lives and leaving no alternatives, or destroying them, or buying them. Now they get to deal with the consequences
The reason most publishers post on YouTube is because they depend on the revenue from the YouTube network.
If you don't want to watch ads, fine, but you are expressly violating the wishes of the people who are creating the content and then rationalizing it to yourself. The fact that you still rationalize not buying the ad-free premium offering is the kicker.
It costs creators literally nothing to upload an mp4 file to a second website and it would create market forces where youtube now has to compete for views with those alternate platforms (even if it's fragmented). But they're not doing it. Okay, so then I need to use youtube, doesn't mean I need to give google my payment information to pay a fraction of that money onto creators and mainly further their adtech
The ad industry brought the current situation on to themselves.
Am I not telling them with my wallet to develop other ad-free solutions that I will pay them and the content creators money for?
> They pay the creators per impression even if you block the ads. Blocking ads harms Google, not the content producers.
Blocking ads and refusing to pay any money into the YT ecosystem decreases the revenue per viewer which will eventually reduce the amount of money YT pays to creators and/or increase the price they charge to YT premium subscribers.
Youtube specifically has a plethora of useful information made by normal people. You can find hundreds of thousands of videos, in most languages, about doing most basic and complex repairs for almost any model of car made in the last few decades, for example. It is essentially a giant public library.
Sometimes this is a publicly tradable for profit endeavor, sometimes it is private or perhaps non-profit(all profits have to be distributed back into the corporation), or even an actual public corporation(often called a town or a city,
What, precisely, is the “threat” that Google presents that does not rely on a government to be the muscle. Are they going to cancel your Gmail account? Cut you off from YouTube?
Surely if they actually are as powerful and dangerous as you think they are you wouldn’t use their stuff at all. But then I guess they wouldn’t be all that powerful if you could just stop using them…
Try that with Google, PayPal, Amazon, Apple, or any number of other companies when an error they've made but refuse to even explain, much less fix, threatens to wreck your livelihood.
To redress grievances with my government, I don't need to make the front page of HN or go viral on Twitter. We don't go a week around here without another front-page lamentation to appeal for noblesse oblige from one of these intentionally-faceless megacorps. That's not how you should have to deal with a company you're doing business with... but it is how you deal with a dictator who leaves you no other choice.
"Does entity X have a monopoly on violence?" If yes, they are a government. If no, they are not.
Whether X is nice or mean, important or unimportant, is irrelevant.
Oh and I'll be downloading my videos for offline viewing and listening to ad free unrestricted music as well.
ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS CH │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
233 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default
234 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default
599 m4a audio only 2 │ 1.05MiB 31k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 31k 22k ultralow, m4a_dash
600 webm audio only 2 │ 1.27MiB 37k https │ audio only opus 37k 48k ultralow, webm_dash
139 m4a audio only 2 │ 1.67MiB 49k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 49k 22k low, m4a_dash
249 webm audio only 2 │ 1.86MiB 55k https │ audio only opus 55k 48k low, webm_dash
250 webm audio only 2 │ 2.44MiB 71k https │ audio only opus 71k 48k low, webm_dash
140 m4a audio only 2 │ 4.42MiB 130k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 130k 44k medium, m4a_dash
251 webm audio only 2 │ 4.71MiB 138k https │ audio only opus 138k 48k medium, webm_dash
Both AAC and Opus fix some of MP3's inherent design problems (like imperfect handling of short sharp transients no matter how much bitrate you throw at it), so the only reason to continue using MP3 is for compatibility with old devices.
Since downloads aren't an official part of Youtube's offering, they don't have to care about old offline-only hardware players only supporting MP3, either and anything that's modern enough to still support either a Youtube app or the website will also support either AAC or Opus.
> the bit rate is not very high
There's also a high bitrate available, but only for subscribers.
Sorry, was that supposed to be a gotcha?
Paying for things you use is how you signal you like the product. The insane contortions people resort to in order to justify piracy boggles my mind. You either pay by watching ads or you pay the premium price. No one is entitled to YouTube. YouTube has to be paid for in order for it to exist and the creators to make stuff. That is the reason to pay for premium.
This is their job, after all.
[1] also, if tracking can help to replace idiotic ads like that with ones for some b2b software product I’d actually be interested in knowing about, please track me.
They still haven't appeared. When I consider what I trade for the ads I'm getting now, it's no where near good enough. My data is valuable and Google et al just aren't offering enough in return. The only place I ever see decent ads is on Google's search page.
I think the reason we see shitty ads like the belly fat ones, is because Google isn't actually trying to serve us first. Their main concern is ad dollars. So even though Google knows you watched a video on changing guitar strings an hour ago and now you are standing in a Guitar Center, instead of showing you an ad for guitar strings, you're going to see an ad for belly fat because that advertiser is willing to pay a fraction of a penny more.
So to answer your question about why you should care - it's because you are greatly overpaying for the service you are getting. Of course there are other reasons too - avoiding ads containing malware is one. Protecting yourself from tyrants is another. If you are socially or politically active, you may not trust that the government now or in the future can resist grabbing the data that shows you support abortion rights or attended a BLM or LGBTQ march or were part of the crowd on Jan 6.
Let me ask you this - if you learned the tracking is actually a person on the other side of the planet watching in real time, everything you do online, every conversation you have, every site you visit, and mix it with the data they can get from your phone (location, phone calls, music preferences, who you are spending time with, etc...) and they manually log it into a database, would that change how you feel about it?
If I added up the total ad time I’d have to see on a free account, the math would heavily favor paying to not see them vs my (or really most software engineers at the level of YouTube I consume)’s hourly rate.
It’s made decisions much easier for me if I take my hourly post-tax rate and compare it to services I’m using. If math works out, it’s generally worth it.
I’d love to fight the good fight against ads and stuff, but between working 9-5 and a side business, relationships, hobbies, I just don’t have the time.
I appreciate advertising money pays the salaries of people in such companies, but there are other less intrusive ways. Since I've grown up with the evolution of internet advertising, my brain is wired to just ignore it. I can't saying I've knowingly be influence by any form of internet advertising, ever.
A better solution for all concerned would just be to watermark a corner of a video with 'sponsored by company X' than the hours of human effort wasted in squeezing 30 seconds of adverts into everything, and the effort of people to block and get around that.
Oh, that's OK, unknowing influence will do.
The way you phrase it makes it seem like you think they slapped ads on something that would have otherwise been a free gift.
No
this is false. if they can’t show the ad they won’t pay the content creator.
I agree with OP that the $13 I spend on YouTube is easy money. Would happily spend that amount or more on an alternative.
Youtube is one of the best things on the internet. The shame is that it's centralized with a single point of failure.
The upsides of youtube are enormous - people learn a lot there. It's not just nerds learning about stuff, but everyone. How do I fix this thing on my car, etc? People show and tell about all kinds of topics. This is making people more knowledgeable and capable on a citizen level(!)
The written word champions here will have to realize that for some, videos are a superior medium for transmitting know-how.
30 second un-skippable advert to see a 7 year old 45 second clip? I press "back" and watch neither.
Thinking of supporting creators: I looked at Nebula a while back as an alternative; I think there was some UX issue back then, but they've likely improved it and I should look again.
If the ads were silent banners changing the aspect ratio of the videos, I wouldn't mind them.
The obvious reality here is that RandyLahey1989 from Halifax probably isn’t going to start a Substack about snowmobile repair, nor would anyone read it if he did, but his video on replacing the carb in a 2011 Switchback has hundreds of comments thanking him for his help. Wouldn’t you agree the internet’s a better place for giving Randy the chance to share his domain knowledge (and get paid for it)?
I seriously think the “everything should be an article” crowd is a bit disconnected with how the average person prefers to create. The future of consumption is video for a growing majority of internet users, one would be a fool to pretend otherwise.
I’d want the summary and images to be verbatim from the video, but for it to strip crap like “hey, it’s been a while since I made my last video, as you can see behind me, nessie the cow is caught in a tree in my vertical farm wall again, which you can see another video about. Today, we are going to explain how to open this laptop, but first I’m going to talk about [product placement]”
Plus paying for youtube premium does not remove the sponsor ads inside videos.
Also I feel like the algorithm has gotten worse and worse? I personally don't like to support that.
Afaik From ad revenue channels get 55%. They also get money from premium subscribers depending on how much time they spent on channel. I wouldn't call it peanuts.
Louis Rossmann:
> If you gave a creator even $1 as a donation that is more than they will make from you watching years of ads on their content.
I just don't feel like paying 100 different youtube channels $1-$2 each every year.
They say they pay out 55% of ad revenue per video and 55% of subscription revenue.
Assuming 10% of video creators have successfully set up monetization (I made up that number), then they are only paying out 5.5% of ad revenue, since (as far as I know) the unclaimed ad revenue is not pooled and the distributed proportionately to other accounts.
It’s unclear if they put YouTube premium revenue in per-creator buckets in the same way as they do ad revenue. If so, then they would only be paying out 5.5% of subscription revenue in my 10% example. If, on the other hand, subscription revenue is split amongst just the monetized creators that you personally watch, then they would be paying the 55% their marketing department likes to brag about.
I haven’t been able to figure out which way they do the accounting.
However, as of 2021, over their service lifetime, they paid $30B to creators. Their 2022 revenue was $29B
So, they’re definitely keeping the vast majority of the combined ad and subscription money that comes in the front door (or revenue exploded in 2022).
Support page clearly explains about revenue sharing, I don't see anything about pooling:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=...
If you ever tried to self host you'll know just how expensive that is.
Youtube is actually one of the good companies out there when it comes to paying creators a fair share. No other company that I know of pay creators this well, and it is probably a big reason for their continued success.
There are dozens and dozens of different creators of videos that I watch each month, so if I only used Patreon most wouldn't get anything from me.
It's not only more effective, but also doesn't support Google (main player in the ad industry)
Something that costs rather steep amount of money?
I wouldn't support them that way. They shaft creators in every way possible.
You should be subscribing to Patreons and their video subscriptions. YouTube Premium is NOT the way.
So have 100 different Patreon subscriptions each month? The minimum pledge is $1. What if I watch 200 different YT creators? What about the short videos? Should I create a new Patreon subscription for each individual creator I watch? What if my interests frequently change (they do). Should I spend hours per month managing individual Patreon subscriptions?
The original post is about blocking ads. Blocking ads reduces the amount of money going to creators. Now you are saying that paying actual real money to not see ads is also not the way.
> They shaft creators in every way possible.
I guess this could be true that YT "shaft[s] creators in every way possible". If this were true, I'm somehow guessing that not basically everyone would show their videos there, don't you think?
There's a balance here; being universally against ads (which quite a few people here are) while also refusing to pay anything for content is not a congruent view.
At a very minimum there is considerable costs associated with delivering the video content, as most of us know.
And for the record, I do patronize the creators whom I watch lots of consistently.
The fact that content creators are still using Youtube doesn't mean Youtube is not shafting content creators. Youtube has killed most of their competitors so it's not like content creators have other options right now, but I suspect new competitors will show up if Google continue to enshitify youtube.
Source: I'm a full time youtuber, I have done Patreon for over a year, and I have friends who are also full time youtubers.
If you're talking about them building a secret extra profile about you with those things turned off, then they wouldn't need you to login for that.
If you don’t use an account you can create a fresh container every once in a while and start the game anew and you can choose to not associate it all with your identity.
You can ‘pause history’ which means ‘If you turn off your YouTube watch history and have no significant prior watch history, YouTube features that rely on your watch history to give video recommendations, like recommendations on the YouTube homepage, are removed.’ it doesn’t mean they don’t store it.
Google stores everything and deletes nothing. If you don’t want Google to keep track of information, you have to make sure they don’t have it and never get it.
This would be a clear GDPR violation. This isn't the 2000s or 2010s any more.
Because what happens over time is that some new feature or service comes along that you have to also opt out of.
even if you uninstall, remove from history in the app, and remove from Google account history, future API calls reflect that you've installed the app before.
Keep your hand in the adblocking world because it's morally right.
People can do two things.
> Disclaimer: I want to support content creators, so to be fair, after a few months of blocking YouTube ads, I am now paying for YouTube Premium; Just because I can break something, doesn’t mean I need to.
Did you even open the article?
We deserve butter! https://butter.sonnet.io/
No, paying Nebula as an alternative to paying Youtube doesn't work for many viewers because most creators who create good content are not on Nebula. E.g. Many popular channels with worthwhile info such as Applied Science, Technology Connections, 3Blue1Brown, etc are not on Nebula.
Also, many people who use Youtube for learning DIY repair, hobbies, coding, etc and Nebula doesn't really cater to those genres. E.g. I watched some videos about configuring Unifi networks and then some tutorials on installing some flooring. These types of videos are not on Nebula's platform.
There is a huge variety and scope of educational material on Youtube and platforms like Nebula/CuriosityStream only have a fraction of that.
I've had college students build better apps for homework. It's insulting considering the rather high price of a service.
Also you have more control over where the money goes with Patreon, and they’re far better corporate citizens than google.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l...