I also have DNS66 (available on F-Droid) running continuously in the background, which takes care of most ads and trackers in any other apps.
But they do it, and the market loves their numbers, so I suspect Google wants the same result.
Next day shipping depending on items can be from £2-3 pounds to over £10 and higher.
So depending on how often you shop on amazon you can save a fair amount on free next day deliveries alone.
The reason the market loves it I surpect is that it is saving people more than it costs to buy it.
Where as YouTube + music Saves people nothing but 5 seconds and a button click.
And for £12.99 a month it simply not worth it.
Full premium is now the only option.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-...
Of course, as soon as my credit card date needed to be updated, they kicked me off of the introductory pricing I was told I could keep forever. It's now about double that price (your price may vary for "reasons"). Then they killed Google Music in favor of the inferior YouTube Music.
YouTube legitimately has better content library than any individual streaming service.
To me, that's way, way less valuable.
And it’s fine that people who ad block get the service for free but they’re going to be playing a cat and mouse game forever, the same way I could get the New York Times for free if I threw links at archive.is, but if I’m a regular reader that experience is going to suck to the point of a subscription being worth it.
I also think that all of these streaming services are so ridiculously affordable compared to most other life expenses. Nobody seems to mind spending $12 on one trip to McDonald’s or Starbucks for product that only lasts a fraction of a day but somehow a month of watching zero ads on YouTube with a few extra features thrown in isn’t worth the price.
I disabled adblock about a month before started my YouTube trial because I wanted to do a fair comparison. What I have found is that the removal of ads is simply not worth the $18/month YouTube Premium costs in my country. For that price, I would rather just see ads even without any adblocker.
There are a LOT of things I could spend $216 on that would give me more pleasure than not seeing YouTube ads for a year. Even better, I could just reconfigure my adblocker a couple of times a year (something I already do due to the malware arms race). That's way better than cutting $216 out of my hobby budget.
Now, if I had the option to get YouTube Premium (or some reduced version of that only offered ad removal) for about half the current price, then it would probably be worth it.
(And no, I do not buy fast food, either. It is more expensive and tastes worse than something I can whip together at home.)
I was excited about downloading videos for offline viewing, but it turns out I can't download them to my laptop (only to my phone), so that's a feature I won't use after all.
I'm not interested in the music streaming service or any of the other features, either.
So ad removal is the only feature I'm using. I would pay half of what they are charging currently for just ad removal alone, but since that's not an option, I am about to cancel the trial and return to traditional adblocking.
It used to be you could see the ratio of likes to dislikes on videos, but they forcefully removed that from all videos. YT claimed it was to prevent bullying, but it was always possible to disable likes on your own videos. I think the real reason was: All the major news networks had extreme dislike ratios on their videos, and they wanted to promote that over alt sources of information.
With regards to being compensated, if I want to support a creator, I will just donate to them. Many creators ended up using Patreon due to de-monetization.
> but we already pay for Netflix/Prime/HBO/etc
No?
Stop watching them then, where is the problem?
So are you saying that the majority of people are against paying creators for their work? You mean deep down they believe people should work for free? I'm interested in the evidence you mention.
While I do agree that platforms in general tend to "stifle" creators it shouldn't be discounted how much YouTube actually does pay them. Especially in comparison to other platforms, e.g., TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, it seems to be quite fair. Though if you want to just compensate the creator other avenues tend to be far more better in terms money in from you -> money out to the creator.
It's a networking effect, unfortunately. While there are some very talented creators out there, there is an oder of magnitude between "is a great creator that quickly gathers an audience" and "a creator whose audience will move en masse with them to a new platform". Microsoft spent hundreds of millions trying to appeal to the latter with Mixer and it just didn't cut through despite having exclusive access to some of the largest streamers.
It's tough, and user apathy means it's hard to move off, even if you happen to find someone else to pay.
No ads either, but also
- support for subscriptions (without being logged in)
- watch history (no login required either)
- picture-in-picture mode with control for speed, subtitles…
- offline support (download sound and/or video)
- granular cadence control (up to x3)
- skip silence feature
- support for other websites including soundcloud and peertube instances
- and more
Looks useful for watching specific channels and certain videos I watch repeatedly, so I'll probably start using it for that purpose.
What it seems to be missing is YouTubes algorithmic recommendations, which I find useful for discovering new content to watch.
For some people however, this might be a good or bad thing.
I also don't like ads. And I understand everyone needs to eat. I value some content on YouTube and I respect their right to receive revenue for their good work. I think changing me money straightforward is the most respectful and honest way for everyone.
While I find the ads a little long and too frequent, I don't mind too much. The reason is that I think YouTube is such a great facility, up there with Wikipedia and Google maps.
The about of virtually boundless information. Guides, Conference talks, old kids shows from my childhood, tutorials on how to fix cars, maintain bikes etc. It's one of the few things online where I feel a paid subscription or ads are justified.
So much of this would be lost to time otherwise.