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Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

Neither side is wrong. Youtube has every right to try as hard as it can to get users to view ads. And users have every right to try as hard as they can to block those ads.

I don't have a right to ad-free youtube, but I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer. If I (and people like me) are abundant enough and succesful enough, then youtube and other services will be forced to abandon an ad-supported model. I'm personally ok with that.

But as long as they are attempting to pursue ad revenue, I'm going to try and avoid those ads, for a host of reasons.

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I think this is a great take, with one exception: I think the loss of (free) ad-supported YouTube would be a devastating loss for the world at large.

How's that? Its algorithm is not exactly making the world a better place. It's filled with propaganda from all corners of the political spectrum with about zero responsibility.

But there is also TikTok, which is even worse. So yeah, in that way you could be right.

If only we could pay for the things we use, and only that.

YouTube has been such a big boon to the world in helping people learn. The amount of people who have learnt several skills from YouTube enabling them to make a living is very very large. I know several people who had non STEM education and taught them CS via YouTube and went on to have good SWE careers. Whole of MIT OCS is hosted on Youtube. All of Khan Academy videos are also hosted on Youtube.

They could be hosted elsewhere. Why should free education material that is already funded by donations be locked behind ad based hosting? Hosting is not that expensive if you're using only those services. Especially in the countries where it's mostly being used.

Hosting is very expensive, e.g https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-cr...

That is why almost nobody bothers to do it themselves outside of big tech.

No it's not. Just use PeerTube.

No you don't. There's Bunny CDN though

I've personally run servers for several businesses in the streaming education space. And one business that serves over 40,000 concurrent connections. The entire business fits into 1.5 racks at a local DC. The monthly cost is under $5,000 for the service, space, and cooling. There is an initial cost to purchase some servers, switches, etc. I'd be surprised if Khan academy had much more than that many active connections. It's really just not that expensive, no matter how much AWS wants to sell you on that falsehood.

> not that expensive

yeah, but it’s hard to overstate how much less expensive “free” is than anything else.

I don’t know how you do free video hosting for the entire world without YouTube’s model.

ipfs or torrents integrated into the browser. The "sharing economy" and p2p were huge back before corporations figured out how to get it under control and corral people back onto centralized, ephemeral streaming platforms.

Instead of a "like" people could give a video a pin, and then they'll have their own offline copy as long as they want it, and also help share it.

I think the bigger issue with p2p nowadays is the move to portable devices. The majority of people nowadays are on phones if not laptop and tablets. P2P has the user giving up their storage, battery life, and data. It works fine in more niche applications, but it'll never be mainstream.

It's probably not even possible on iOS devices because of the limitations in background processes.

My phone is linked to my desktop and can send tabs. No reason it couldn't proxy p2p connections (and pins) though my desktop. Or more generally torrent/ipfs gateways could be a thing people pay for (or ISPs might offer to reduce their own transfer costs by caching popular content), making it easy for mobile users while keeping the fundamental technology distributed. Mobile devices could also pin directly to cloud storage.

There's a massive design space here if we didn't already have google dumping on the market. Or if we didn't allow media companies (who don't want p2p) to monopolize providing Internet service. And if government subsidies and spectrum licenses came with an ipv6 mandate so we could ditch NAT.

If you are talking about educational content for the entire world, I would argue that it's a significantly smaller achievement, than a service where everyone is watching cat videos all night. Free education is a niche market for a niche audience. YouTube is hardly the correct platform for that.

What do you mean funded by donations? People making educational YouTube videos have their income from YouTube advertising and Premium subscribers. People having utility from their videos should pay for them.

I find it incredible that people accept and support enormous amounts of tax money from workers go to pay for worthless schools, while at the same time they are grinding their teeth at the suggestion that they pay a few dollars for incredibly well made educational videos.

Why does the screeching teacher or professor deserve a high monthly salary, good job security and a good pension, while the person making educational videos that improve people's lives all over the world deserve to have her videos pirated by hackers?

See the post I was replying to. Khan Academy, MIT free courses, etc. Those are in fact funded by donations. If you check the viewership numbers on individual course videos, it is unlikely they are generating a positive revenue from YouTube payouts. As for being upset that people don't want to pay, I think I can help with that. People don't want to pay TWICE. We already donated to Khan or MIT. Why are we also paying YouTube to obfuscate FREE content? Khan should choose a different method of delivery. YouTube is not a proper platform for educational videos.

Those are but two of thousands of channels publishing educational videos. The vast majority of them are dependent on money from YouTube for their income. Would Khan or MIT be able to host and deliver their videos at a price that would make it worthwhile to ditch YouTube, or would that take away donator money from other functions?

It allows all of those channels to join a competing platform that's better suited for education, rather than piggy backing on a platform built for watching nonstop cat videos. Education and YT are not remotely good for each other. Imagine that college is free, and you're studying to become a doctor. Every seven minutes during your O. Chem lecture, Kanye West jumps in front of the professor to tell you how much he likes Pepsi. It's the wrong platform.

> a platform built for watching nonstop cat videos.

And who are you to decide that YouTube should be for cat videos and not high quality educational and documentary videos? On our family TV we have YouTube subscribed to a lot of documentary and educational channels. Recommendations are consistently of the highest quality. On my FreeTube I have other subscriptions to more immersive quality scientific and crafts videos. There is no other platform where videos like these are published.

Who are you to come and say that these videos shouldn't be on YouTube and that these creators shouldn't get paid from me watching their videos? How does our use infringe on yours?

You might as well say that serious debate or business should not be conducted online, because everybody knows the internet is for porn and Minecraft.

There has been a silent revolution lately on YouTube as to the offering of high quality content. Things aren't how they used to be.

>Who are you to come and say that these videos shouldn't be on YouTube and that these creators shouldn't get paid from me watching their videos? How does our use infringe on yours?

I'm me. I'm the world's leading expert on my own opinion. If you watch enough YouTube, you might become an expert on someone's opinion, but likely not on mine.

Your use doesn't infringe anything. Please check that you've responded to a comment relevant to your defensive take on the situation. My comment, again, is in regards to Khan Academy, a 501c venture.

Residents of third world countries can use it in place of a university education, since they don't have one.

In short, I don't think you're on topic. But, maybe I'm the one that didn't understand.

Does your family use YouTube in place of a university education, but you'd prefer to watch ads than to have donors from wealthier nations pay to remove them for you?

If you answered yes, I'm intrigued. Please continue. If not, you're probably off topic and needlessly defending against a point I'm not making.

I might have missed something, but going through the parent comments, I didn't see any mention of Khan Academy before you mentioned it in a reply to my post. So to me the topic is about educational videos in the broad sense, not about Khan Academy specifically.

> Does your family use YouTube in place of a university education, but you'd prefer to watch ads than to have donors from wealthier nations pay to remove them for you?

No, I pay for YouTube premium for my family. The price is a bargain and creators get paid better for the things we watch. Yes, I 100% use YouTube in place of a university education, because I don't have any interest in getting degrees in astronomy, middle eastern politics, law, archeology etc. Not to mention the knowledge you can educate yourself on with YouTube that isn't available within academia.

Then you're using YouTube exactly as I have advocated here; paid.

> How's that? Its algorithm is not exactly making the world a better place. It's filled with propaganda from all corners of the political spectrum with about zero responsibility.

I think this is true, but youtube is also a platform where people can share video content with a big chunk of the internet connected world for zero money. I think that's pretty cool, particularly when I think about all the small accounts I follow whose content just wouldn't be available without youtube (or a similar platform).

I agree that GP is a great take on the situation.

I'm less sure that humanity is incapable of finding another way to foster the creativity and the education/entertainment value the world gets out of youtube. I'd love to see us try and only go back to advertising if that is indeed the only/best way.

Yes ad-supported YT is "free" of direct cash payment, but how much do we (society) "pay" in form of thoughts that we wouldn't have had where it not for an advertiser to force it onto us. I sometimes wonder if advertising is a kind of corruption and will be outlawed / considered inhumane at some point in the future.

It would be a great benefit to society if it weren't free. It would stimulate competition in the space, allow varied ideas to thrive as different media ecosystems and market research models could flourish. The few entities in control of marketing at large are in control of what free thought is perceived to be acceptable or preferred in society regardless of whether or not it reflects any truth about how we actually feel about anything. The above causes people with extreme ideas to feel a sense of entitlement towards specific political stances which breeds intolerance towards opposing views, which leads towards greater political divisiveness. All of those things are in opposition to the values of a society based on sharing ideas and critically thinking about political issues.

I'd pay for YT if it wasn't run by Google.

Google wants to track me and sell the data and wants me to pay for it, and I'm not willing to be abused that badly.

I payed YouTube premium for 2 months. When they come up with Web Integrity API and Topics API I felt guilty. Felt like I am funding something bad

They'll have your data regardless if you pay for the service or not. And nothing is free, they need to pay for the service, now, if you do pay for the service they should enable more privacy.

> if you do pay for the service they should enable more privacy.

They're never doing that.

I pay for ad-free Kagi search. I'd pay for an ad-free YT competitor. It would need to be run by someone other than Google though since I'd never trust them if they said they were giving me more privacy.

For the educational side of YouTube, Nebula is great. The platform is very robust (it streams HD video at 2x speed with no difficulty), and it's run by the guy behind one of the largest educational youtube channels. Most of the great educational options are available there, and creators even strip out sponsorships before uploading, so you're getting a truly ad free experience.

Google does not sell your data. Your data is their most valuable weapon, they use it to target ads. They wouldn't sell it for anything, it's more valuable to them to hold it.

It's not a given that YouTube would be lost. For example, I could see a world where it was collectively 'nationalized' by the UN, made ad-free and accessible to all.

Nah, rubbish. We've been able to do high quality video with P2P protocols for decades at this point. We have the bandwidth and the storage just sitting there. The only reason we haven't developed a system like YouTube is because we have YouTube. But take YouTube out of the picture and we're very ready for something like Wikipedia for videos.

Let's not forget that just 20 years ago we didn't even have a free encyclopaedia. I'm assuming, of course, when you talk of a "devastating loss" you mean the educational videos not the brain rotting shite like "Mr Beast" or hours upon hours of gameplay footage.

And how do creators get paid for the videos shared by P2P?

They don't. I don't want paid for content. If you will only make a video because you want to get paid for it then please, don't make the video.

Many people will make videos without expecting payment. See YouTube, for example.

> I don't want paid for content.

Then the solution for you is extremely simple: Do not go to youtube.com

Then you won't have to be bothered by any videos that people made with the expectation of being paid.

But what are you doing in a discussion about YouTube? You're free to make as many videos as you please and share them by P2P. YouTube is a partner for video creators for distributing their videos. You are not in that partnership in any way.

You are offering a "solution" to a sentence taken out of the larger context. Poster is arguing for a platform for videos that are not made for payment.

and the implied answer is that such a platform does not and would not exist.

As I explained in another comment, YouTube is not that. Netflix is that. Patreon is that.

YouTube is something different. It's more like Wikipedia to many people.

Believe me when I say if I could avoid YouTube I would. They've made it abundantly clear they don't want people like me. But what choice do I have when the vast majority of stuff is uploaded there? It's like saying "just stop breathing if you don't like air pollution".

I don't care about technicalities. I care about practicalities. YouTube can either be the free public repository of videos or it can be private like Netflix and facilitate payments between consumers and creators. Not both.

If this were about YouTube's costs then they could charge creators for hosting and bandwidth costs. If I set up a website, I pay for it, not you. Why should video be the other way around?

YouTube knows it needs to attract creators by being the free, public platform with one hand, but as soon as it gets that content it uses it to extract money from users with the other.

Any of these things would be good:

* YouTube goes private like Netflix,

* YouTube acts like a video host and charges uploaders for the service like any other web host,

* YouTube accepts they are like Wikipedia and cuts their costs by using technology like P2P and/or make the market absorb the costs by negotiating better peering deals (ie. push the bandwidth costs on to internet subscribers).

But masquerading as the free, public internet video platform then expecting to get paid for it by users who now have no other choice? Forget it.

YouTube attracts creators by giving them free hosting as well as paying them. If you've thought of YouTube as a Wikipedia, you've had the wrong impression. But how can you continue with the wrong impression while being aware that they don't want people like you?

Paid and ad-supported video has been around for decades, there's nothing strange about it. If you're used to going to the soup kitchen for free meals, few are going to sympathize when you're going to the restaurant of your choice and demand free meals. "But they don't have the salad that I like at the soup kitchen, I have no other choice!". Maybe the restaurant should start charging the chefs for their usage of kitchen equipment so that you can get the free meal of your liking? Maybe it's their fault for letting you in and now they owe you a free meal? They could have been members only like the fancier restaurant on the other side of town.

> I don't have a right to ad-free youtube, but I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer.

Ars Technica used to autoplay a video every time you browsed on their website.

I am (was) flabbergasted by the sheer amount of pretentiousness that they thought that was ok...

But you can pay for YouTube Premium, they already have an alternative to an ad supported business model.

I have YouTube Premium. But I worry that once a substantial portion of the user base goes Premium, they'll also start to slip in ads. I think the ad business has made everyone who cares paranoid.

This is such a huge downside with subscription services in general. The product itself can change right under your nose and there's nothing you can do about it but cancel. First I was paying to filter out content, now I'm paying for access? That's a totally different thing that I didn't agree to.

If you frame it in a different context it sounds ridiculous. "Actually we're getting out of the video streaming business and just mailing you postcards that we think look neat. Still charging you the same rate every month, though."

There's plenty of precedent for this. Amazon has said they'll be introducing ads on Prime Video, where everyone has already paid for the service. I've seen ads on other already-paid-for services too. The simple fact is that business people will always want more ads everywhere, no matter how much it degrades the customer experience, because extra revenue is easier to measure than customer disgust. In their personal lives they probably hate ads as much as we do, but a fatter paycheck can buy a lot of hypocrisy.

Prime Video will still have an ad free tier. Having a cheaper tier that is subsidized with ads allows for more people to be able to afford it.

This isn't like Netflix where a cheaper, inferior plan was introduced. They're taking the current ad-free service introducing ads to it.

You're going to have to pay an additional $3/mo for no ads along with your existing $15/mo (Prime), $139/yr (Prime) or $8.99 (Prime Video only) plans.

This doesn't look like subsidizing to me. To me it looks more like "pay us more because we can do whatever we want".

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...

No, Google still is an ad company. I do not want my identity and payment info tied to my watch history. I do not trust Google to not use my data for monetization outside of youtube (e.g., selling my 'anonymized' user persona to data aggregators). Hence, using a google account to get youtube premium is not an option.

> I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer.

I agree with your statement but I'm not sure how it applies to ads. I hate ads as much as the next person, but blocking them is kind of like using the service and refusing to pay for it.

There are two proper ways to not see ads on Youtube. You can either pay for Youtube premium, or not watch Youtube videos.

There are legitimate reasons to block ads, like preventing tracking. But if you're blocking ads because you think the service you're using isn't worth letting them through, then don't use the service?

When a website actually tells me that I can't use it with an ad blocker, then I leave and don't come back. I don't have an ad-blocker-blocker-blocker, there's no technical barrier to detecting my ad blocker and responding accordingly.

Until that happens, I'm forced to assume that the service actually does get enough value from my attention that it's not worth it to them to lose my business (such as it is), and I am certainly not going to voluntarily subject myself to ads that aren't actually essential.

These are good points. There is also a separate point to make, which is that YouTube doesn't (in large part) create videos, they "just" host other people's videos. YouTube wants to capture a bigger and bigger slice of the value created by interactions of other people with each other. There is a question of how much monetization YouTube "deserves" versus how much they are able to actually extract from people by being a de-facto monopoly. (This is Doctorow's "enshittification" process.)

Right, that's an interesting point. On the one hand, Youtube itself doesn't add value. The creator uploads are the value.

But if Youtube didn't monetize, presumably with the rise of the Youtube star, content creators wouldn't make enough money and would not publish there. So if you think of it from this angle, Youtube needs to go to war with ad blockers simply because their content creator, the users adding value, require them to do so.

I also wonder if the rise of the "this video is sponsored by xyz" segments in people's videos have cause more harm. That ad money that is circumventing Youtube entirely, paid directly to the content producer. So Youtube might be "jealous" of this revenue and wants to encourage its content producers to let them run ads only? because it's easier that way?

> I also wonder if the rise of the "this video is sponsored by xyz" segments in people's videos have cause more harm. That ad money that is circumventing Youtube entirely, paid directly to the content producer. So Youtube might be "jealous" of this revenue and wants to encourage its content producers to let them run ads only?

I think this is exactly right, but what's missing from the story is that YouTube created this problem. I'm mostly on educational YouTube, and in that sector creators turned to sponsorships because the alternative was to constantly wonder whether your next video would be demonetized and lose out on all the revenue (while still showing ads on the videos!) Sponsorships are a much more predictable revenue stream.

If YouTube wanted to support creators better, they wouldn't do it by adding more and more ads (to the point where my wife is finally approaching me to ask about ad block), they would do it by actually addressing creator concerns about reliability of their revenue streams.

Yes, thank you for the reply.

> ... addressing creator concerns about reliability of their revenue streams.

Right, exactly. That's the core of the issue. Very insightful.

> demonetized and lose out on all the revenue (while still showing ads on the videos!)

Demonetized is often a misnomer in this case. The actual term YouTube uses is "limited monetization", which shows the limited ads on the video, and still earns the creator money from those ads. The issue comes from those ads being super cheap because no one wants to put ads on those videos, and therefore the creator makes a fraction of the usual revenue. Found at least 1 post from 3 years ago saying 1% [0]

> they would do it by actually addressing creator concerns about reliability of their revenue streams.

Until users are more willing to pay for YouTube, YouTube will continue to have their own concerns about their revenue streams, which is the same ads. Basically giving the ad companies all the power in this ecosystem. [1]

I've heard plenty of creators advocate for Premium because it is also a more predictable (and profitable) revenue stream and takes the ad companies out of the ecosystem. [2]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/ipkrxv/co...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/analyst-predicts-the-youtube...

[2] https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111319895234933188 from just a few hours ago.

Youtube definitely adds value though. The ability to upload and forget, comments, comment moderation, subscriptions, playlists, recommendations, community posts, transcoding, closed captioning, video section labeling.

They may not all be valuable to each individual person, but all together they form the YouTube experience.

Absolutely true. It would be nice to be able to separate this value from the value of being a central hub/platform.

> I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer

I love this sort of mental gymnastics (the passive voice is a nice addition, too).

You know you can win this game quickly by not visiting YouTube again or by paying YouTube $15/month?

But no, it’s much better to exert your “rights” to try and control what gets sent to your computer. Also known as what you requested (since you know that ads are part of YouTube).

By that same logic I have no right to complain when a website uses 3rdparty trackers, or tries to run a monero client without my knowledge, because after all, I should have known they would do that ahead of time and not visited the site. But since I did, since I 'requested' it, I should just take everything I'm given and do exactly as told, mmhm.

> But no, it’s much better to exert your “rights” to try and control what gets sent to your computer.

But no, it's much better to exert your "rights" to try and control what gets run and shown on end-users computers.

> Also known as what you requested

I requested the video, nothing else. I don't care what you think I should or shouldn't know, I'm only trying to access the video and I am only requesting the video. If Youtube doesn't want me messing with the bytes they're sending me, they should not send them to me.

Firstly: I pay for youtube premium. Secondly, I honestly do not understand what gymnastics you think I am going through. I can view and control whatever content is sent to my computer. I do not have an obligation to allow any company to send arbitrary data or to force me to view it. Do you think it's similarly bad to skip around a video, when clearly the content creator meant for it to be a whole complete video? How about if I skip ahead when the content creator has a sponsor ad section?

You are right, I could choose to just not go to youtube (or any other ad-supported website). Or, I could choose to view whatever portions of a website are made publicly available, in whatever way seems best to me. Just like I don't have to go to youtube, they don't have to make it publicly available. It goes both ways.

That isn't mental gymnastics.

> You know you can win this game quickly by not visiting YouTube again

Yes. You understand perfectly. YT doesn't have to enshittify much further for this to be no loss.

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