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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

Because YouTube ads like all ads are annoying. For the couple of times a month I end up watching something on YouTube by luck, why would I care about “creators”.

I don’t use Spotify.

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If you don’t care about the creators then why watch the content? Sure, the subscription might not make sense to you, but either the content has some value or not. The ads are the value exchange.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the ads either.

They made it addictive and it's not possible to uninstall on Android. You can only deactivate the application.

And what is the effective difference between uninstalling and deactivating it for you, assuming you want to do either of those to prevent over use?

Uninstalling is moving the icon to the top of the screen and letting it go over "uninstall" and freeing hundreds of MB. Deactivate is buried in settings -> apps -> YouTube -> deactivate -> confirm.

Otherwise the same once it's done.

I am almost always following a link to YouTube, or watching an embedded video. I don’t really care about the content usually. It’s a means to an end

I guess my point is, either the content has some value to you or not. If you’d rather not sit through the ad for the content, that’s fine, go and spend your time doing something that does have value to you.

I use YouTube primarily as a diy reference manual. It’s infrequent enough that I don’t want to pay for a subscription. I will however exchange a small bit of time in order to get the content, because it has value to me at that moment.

I don’t think content on the internet has value really. I assume everyone is doing it for fun and expects no money for it.

I’m not talking about the value to the creator. I’m talking about the value to the consumer

> If you don’t care about the creators then why watch the content?

Because he might not give a * about the creator or their way to monetization, but want to watch the content? And even then, the content itself doesn't seem to be that important either, seeing that they said "a couple times a month".

Probably it even falls under the category of "I watch it because it is there anyway, but I wouldn't miss it too much if the content hadn't been created to begin with".

I myself watch quite a bunch of YT with ads blocked and SponsorBlock to skip inserted product placements, because absolutely all of my consumption falls into that category. I wouldn't miss if tomorrow none of it was made any more. Well, maybe Smarter Every Day. But even then there are much better ways to support that channel. Most creators found out that real money doesn't come from YT but from sponsorships and side channels outside of the platform, anyway.

> If you don’t care about the creators then why watch the content?

Because it's there and I can.

Because I was tired and work was painful, I wanted some rest but YT injected some garbage content. They've exploited my vulnerable mental state to manipulate me into clicking, but I didn't like the content. Should I support predators?

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