I mean ads suck, but YouTube, unlike most of the web, is very happy to take your money in exchange for not showing you ads, so it seems entirely fair.
So yeah, adblock for me all day long.
People are going to find excuses forever rather than just pay $10 or whatever for a service they use for multiple hours every day. The same people who wouldn't think twice about spending that much on two cups of coffee which will last them 5 minutes. This is exactly why we will never have ethical monetization on the internet, and will be stuck with ads and tracking forever.
cough absolute pure fantasy unadulterated premium bullshit.
I subscribed for YT Premium at one point. I watched one video on a subject and magically started seeing adds for it across the internet.
Go re-read the terms of service carefully.
Disabling watch history and recommendations isn't a premium feature, its just a privacy setting anyone can enable. If you had the same experience after disabling watch history then that would be very interesting.
That's my excuse.
I haven't seen a paid promotion label in a while, and I watch a lot of videos with sponsored segments.
> lets you skip ahead
How gracious. A seek bar is not a meaningful feature here.
> YouTube adds option to turn off all tracking and recommendations.
You can turn off watch history. Do they claim that turns off tracking? Where do they say that?
> Nope, I don't trust Google
That's a valid stance to have. Some people would pay other companies but not Google in particular.
> The same people who wouldn't think twice about spending that much on two cups of coffee which will last them 5 minutes.
Don't forget to complain about avocado toast.
I also don't believe that they make $14/month from that ads that I would have to endure to watch content otherwise. It strongly feels like a premium to not be assaulted with ads to enjoy content.
where can I see an example of this sort of thing, using ads you approve of, that scales to generating tens of billions of USD a year (to cover the costs of running YouTube)?
Check out r/youtube, for example.
You also have never been required to watch them! I just right arrow a couple of times but if you want it automated you can just use SponsorBlock and feel content that in exchange the creator is getting extra revenue from your Premium subscription.
if you pay for YouTube Red or whatever then YouTube doesn't (aside from some illadvised fuckups) show ads.
I don't agree with you about "most of the web". There are MANY places that will not allow you to pay them to not be bombarded by ads. Even then, to be able to not have to be bombarded with ads everywhere gets rather expensive, and in many cases not possible. I wish there were a simple way to be able to pay content creators (and by extension somehow the platform they are hosting their content on) for just the content.
I know I'm in a VERY privileged position to be able to do so. I support a few creators on Patreon (which doesn't make up for using an ad blocker on YouTube, because YouTube still needs to get paid for hosting and providing the content). But many Patreon subscriptions feel ridiculously expensive for what they provide. I'm happy to send $1 to a creator once a month (in bulk through a single charge, to minimize the $0.25 + 2.#% cost that credit card processor extort), but some of these creators that create some content want $10/month for some of their exclusive content. Which is nearly what a Netflix or other streaming platform would cost, and have a significantly larger catalog of content to consume.
Why lol
To me, that's like wanting to support the Kremlin. (Where Twitch is North Korea.)
Anecdotally, the setting was thorough enough for me that it completely broke Youtube Music's recommendation engine. Every single source of recommended content would give the exact same songs in the exact same order no matter how many times I would listen.
Breaking privacy regulation is literally Facebook's business model and they've been very successful at that. It's dumb to think Google isn't doing the same.
Personally, I think my chance of having my history tracked and abused is lower logged in + history off versus being logged out where I don't have the option and Google can still fingerprint me 17 different ways. There are obviously many more options for the more privacy conscious but that's where I'm at.
This also makes it completely opaque who gets my money at the end of the month, assuming I only use the video part: Only video creators? Or am I just paying into a global pot that is divided proportionally, i.e. would I end up paying x% for music despite neither wanting nor using that on YouTube?
Imagine Steam making you buy a movie download with every game you purchase, or Amazon requiring you to buy a box of cupcakes with every Kindle book. (Actually Amazon requiring me to pay for a video streaming service for expedited deliveries isn't too far off... Not that I'm too thrilled about that.)
My internet provider doesn't tell me the breakdown of infrastructure/profit/uplink costs. My Netflix bill doesn't tell me the breakdown of new content creation, content licensing, video game development/licensing, infrastructure costs, profits, etc. Should I complain about Netflix making a multi-movie contract with Adam Sandler because he happens to not be my taste? You're complaining about a fantasy you invented not existing.
The fact that there are other bundle-only deals available in the world, some of which are worth it for me and others which aren’t, has no bearing on the fact that I dislike this particular one, and Google is losing my business as a direct result of their bundling.
> My internet provider doesn't tell me the breakdown of infrastructure/profit/uplink costs.
A more appropriate comparison would be an ISP that also forces a Netflix or cable TV subscription onto you.
In fact, my ISP offers both TV+internet bundles and internet only. If they would only offer the former, I’d switch to the competition unless it was somehow the same price as an internet-only competitor.
Weird - have you filed a bug?
Sounds very reasonable and easy to enforce and uncontroversial, good point.
If you're unhappy with the content of videos then complain to the people that made the video? Or don't watch it?
that seems like a completely different and unrelated service to what YouTube does.
Also, I can skip through a video that's doing a "word from their sponsor." I can't skip through I YouTube ad - YouTube determines how much I'm going to watch before I skip through.
Same thing with the web. My computer, my rules.
But google of course is unhappy about it, and will try to frustrate as many users as it can until they can push their "web integrity" crap down users' throats.
Technical curiosity: Can you still roll your own DVR? I know Plex has some functionality there, and CableCARDs are/were a thing but cable providers were trying to put an end to those. And I saw DRM for over-the-air is coming down the pipe with ATSC 3.0
yes it is not 100% tracking free, so are most if not all Internet services, all bad but YouTube does not stand out
Yt-dlp can also make use of it.
They have all sorts of rules that content creators must follow or it hurts the creator's bottom line - I don't see how this would be different.
Content creators negotiate privately with companies and put relevant ads into their content. YouTube does not force content creators to do this and many do not. This has nothing to do with YouTube or YouTube Premium. I like that YouTube does not illegally suppress the right for content creators to negotiate these private contracts.
It is true they don't seem to even attempt to prevent video creators from adding ads within the video itself (explicit or implicit product endorsements especially). These ads aren't as objectionable because the incentive is there for the video creator to ensure the ad doesn't drive you away from the video, and often they try their best to make the ad entertaining in the same way their video is. This would be impractical for YT to enforce since the line is blurry between ad and content, so I don't get too grumpy about it, but I would love to pay an additional amount of money to be totally free of the ads.