The lengths people will go to avoid paying content creators is pretty crazy.
Content creators only get something if they have more than 1000 subscribers and are currently active.
More than 90% of the content I watch on YouTube has been uploaded years ago, and was provided to YouTube FOR FREE by the "content creator". And back then in exchange you could watch those videos ad-free, too.
Then Google has changed the rules of the game in a dirty way. People who have provided the content during the last 18 years aren't paid, it's Google pocketing the ad revenue.
I am more than willing to pay for Netflix, where original content paid for by the streaming service is provided.
But I am NOT willing to pay $14 to be able to watch a 15 year old 5 minutes clip on YouTube ad-free, that was provided to them free of charge.
I would be willing to pay something to cover their traffic cost. Maybe $3 per month or so.
One could also say that YouTube is part of the cultural heritage of the world, and since Google or rather Alphabet had a money printing machine, this content should be freely available to anyone.
Recently they've pushed annoying in page ads on my Adsense sites, despite them being disabled. Soon I'll have to either add a cookie wall or not have ads served in EMEA & UK.
Alphabet knows that its business model is in danger. Closed off spaces like Facebook or Discord are where people hang out. The forum culture has been condensed into Reddit and a few minor forums. Blogs are all SEO trash with content like the 7 best xyz you never knew existed or "he went out into the garden and then he saw..."
In any case, there are too many ads on YouTube and I'm not paying, especially because they make it hard to download the content off YouTube, actively hindering, slowing yt-dl (I know other solutions exist, cat mouse game). So yeah, they know of the value of that content.
The real question is, why is egress so expensive?
Frankly, if Google would be taking it down, or start deleting all that old content where copyright ownership is unclear, we would lose one of the biggest archived on video history.
A radical way would be to split YouTube into the "archives" part, run by a non-profit, and the "new videos where content creators are paid" commercial site.
I don't think egress is expensive. After all, with a couple of exceptions they have neutral peerings with pretty much any ISP on this planet. And the ~$30B of revenue should be more than enough to handle storage and traffic cost.
AFAIK Google does not list the actual profits that YouTube makes, but I'd assume it's a very very profitable business - again, if you compare this to Netflix, Disney+ etc, who all have producing original content as the highest cost item on their balance sheets, they must be a pretty nice position.
So anyway, as said: I am willing to pay for original content that YouTube themselves are paying for. But I am not willing to pay for anything that was and is provided for free to them.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is a normal usecase. The common default usecase is people are following large content creators and watch fairy modern videos.
Also, you're missing an important point. They are hosted and served for free, as well. While it's not that much cost to host and serve a single video, YT has to host and serve years and years of user generated content. You're paying for the fact that they don't have an aggressive retention policy and videos that old are indexed, stored and served, almost instantly.
If people don’t want to watch the ads and “content creators” aren’t supported they will have to do something else.
I put content creators in quotes because 97% of you tube is trash content that they all steal from the few people making original things. Most of them should not make any money.
I met YouTube’s threshold for monetization (10k views I think it was), then they changed it to 1000 subs, demonetized me (my video topics are random, one will be an interesting dashcam clip, another about a MacBook Air repair unpublished elsewhere and therefore not really “subscribable”), then a while later, they put ads on it anyway without paying me a penny.
Another rule about some minimum hours of views, but I’m at a loss since I’ll make useful 2 minute videos that skip my life story.
F that.
Meanwhile on Adsense, I started making $2/month, which motivated me to do better and started making $20/month, then $200, and for a while $2000.
3000 watched hours or 3 million shorts views lol.
They want only the cream.
But dethroning the king would need an ad delivery solution, which in turn requires an affordable payment solution.
And you would need to keep it civil, because now, if you're in the EU are liable for what people upload. And then, thanks to the DSA, you have to monitor "wrong speak". How is anyone supposed to bring up a competitor with those blockers?
Hulu is a prime example of "too many ads". I just avoid watching videos on Hulu nowadays unless I have no other choice. A 24 minute video with 6 30 second ads (or whatever it is they play) is just annoying.
I’ll always want info, but will never pay. I have complex psychological models about platforms that selectively curate specific content.
Even Veratasium recently had a video demonetized because he included factual historical information about a suicide.
Unfortunately, the people who make content need to eat too.
Demonization only exists because YouTube is beholden to advertisers. If most people subscribed, it wouldn't be a problem.
It’s appealing by nature, and there’s a lot of wonderful content, but there is also a large power imbalance between the creators and the corporation.
Do the actual creators get to choose the ads their content is promoting?
Are the Google ads on YT are the main revenue for creators? What amount does sponsorship play for creator's overall income from hosting on YT?
I bet I'm willing to pay more money than what companies showing me ads are paying whenever I see an ad, but I can't really justify the full Youtube price given I watch around 30m a month on average
On a more serious note, it's not like people owe creators to dedicate their eyeballs to Youtube so they can get a share of that ads money. If you want support, there are ways to ask for it and I guess if your content is interesting, people will support you.
YouTube premium views are significant higher cpm than ads.
I have yt premium, videos have ads//sponsored content. I don’t want to see those. Luckily I can still skip those, but I have no doubt that they’ll make that impossible at a certain point.
I don’t want nordvpn, athletic greens, or whatever is paying the most these days
if you charged me $2000 per month rent and kept it the same, I wouldn't mind paying for it.
Youtube started out as free. Now, suddenly they expect me to pay for premium, I will not be happy paying for it.
On the other hand, I have no problem paying $15 per month on Netflix.
Also got posted here a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23104875
There's a lot of gray area which seems impossible to regulate.
Personally, if a creator serves too much sponsored content I simply wont watch them any longer. Fortunately it's not a problem among my Youtube channel subscriptions.
but also revanced
Honestly, Google should be paying me to get their creators’ content in front of my eyeballs, most of which contains some form of disguised or stealth marketing, or sponsored content, sponsored products, etc.
Google makes their content streams available to watch for free. It’s my own damned right to decide which streams I want to watch. Otherwise they should hide it behind a paywall.
This is without even touching on the topic of how Google exploits and abuses their relationship with content creators (BS copyright system, demonetization, etc), and the fact that the majority of the ads are scams, frauds, political misinformation, etc.