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Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

judge2020

What is it with the disdain for paying for services people use? People often don't feel like paying for it even if they use YouTube more than other streaming services combined.

Maybe the issue is that people got so used to a decade of unlimited high-quality videos for absolutely free?

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I don't mind paying for services.

I mind paying to get the privilege my data exploited.

I mind paying to a company that use its infinite bags of money to outspend any competition unfairly.

I mind paying after getting blackmailed to accept a new deal when they made sure they left no other choice in the market.

I mind paying for a service that is optimized for "engagement" instead of my own well-being.

I mind paying to a company that doesn't know the time to stop growing and wants to crawl into every aspect of my life.

And I mind that paying forces me to give my credit card to a companies that have proven to work against me.

I mind that google will take over my entire phone if I connect to any service with a google account because I paid for it and not just login to that single service.

I mind that it will collect all that data if I don't have an adblocker anyway, just not show me ad, and then give it to gov entities (see PRISM).

What I don't mind is paying. I pay for spotify, for neflix, for dynalist, for kagi, for chatgpt, for codepilot, for github...

But I do mind that many people like you on HN accuses us of being dishonest.

> I mind paying for a service that is optimized for "engagement" instead of my own well-being.

> I mind paying to a company that doesn't know the time to stop growing and wants to crawl into every aspect of my life.

It's worth recognising that as an ad-supported service, YouTube has an incentive to maximise the watch-time of its users and that this incentive goes away when a user starts paying monthly. But until they begin to earn more from subscriptions than ads I can't see how this changes. Maybe there's a universe in which the adblock crackdown actually accelerates the decline in ad-viewership and YouTube becomes incentivised to stop cramming cheap ad-friendly content down our throats and becomes a platform for actual high-quality content. For now, it's probably better to support platforms that actually already work on this model such as Nebula.

I have zero issues with paying in general.

What I don't see, is me paying for the worse service.

Youtube Premium is 12.99€ a month for me. For that small price I get to create a Google Account, accept their TOS, let them track and profile me, keep logging in everywhere (because I delete all local storage in the browser routinely) and replace the small and efficient NewPipe with the Youtube app. Futhermore I cannot download a video now and play it next month without connecting to the internet, or move it to my small dedicated video player that doesn't even have connection to the internet.

What is Googles CPM (revenue per 1000 clicks)? I don't think it comes down to more the a low cent amount. I do not watch enough video to justify the price of premium and I will never watch ads, because those are psychological warfare and completely underregulated...

If Google and all the others make a nice micro payment platform for the browser, which work anonymously and without much hassle, I will by all means pay them the amount of money which me watching the ads would have generated plus 10% service fee since they build the platform.

But not like this!

Those are the terms YouTube sets out when providing you with the service. You can either pay for it (as the terms set out), watch with ads (as the terms set out), or not watch it. All other use is effectively piracy, and they have the legal and arguably moral* right to block you for not following it.

* Yes, it does cost them money to serve and store videos, and no that doesn't disappear with scale. YouTube ingests hundreds of thousands of hours of video a day, and chances are every single video is on at least 2 continents at any given time. They don't get some insane volume price on the enterprise HDDs they use.

What terms? I don’t recall agreeing to any?

> Your use of the Service is subject to these terms, the YouTube Community Guidelines and the Policy, Safety and Copyright Policies which may be updated from time to time (together, this "Agreement").

https://www.youtube.com/t/terms

Even if you don't think you have to follow them, they can still ban you for not following their terms, or not agreeing to them. They are not under an obligation to serve you video unauthenticated and/or without receiving what they expect to receive in return (agreeing to their terms and thus paying via ads or money).

There’s a terms.txt on my desktop that says by sending me data my browser can choose whether or not to render it. By sending me video data you agree to these terms.

And they're blocking you from receiving video? That's the whole point of this post.

Not sure what you mean. I can view them just fine.

I mean them blocking you from viewing it due to using an ad-blocker (or otherwise not using an official client). The OP comment was about "the war on ad blockers", which is what this thread is about.

I haven't agreed to any of that; don't remember signing anything. This stuff does not hold up in EU. My device, my rules.

This is in the situation they block you from watching if you don’t watch are. They are under no obligation to serve you/your device, so they can institute any amount of technical requirements to gain access to the content it hosts, those requirements being plainly laid out in the terms.

Of course they get insane volume discounts. All big tech companies do. It makes me cry to see how much we pay for a ThinkPad. I wish I could buy one for that :')

Regarding morals I don't don't care. Not worth a discussion :)

> watch with ads (as the terms set out)

There is nothing there forcing me to watch the ads, or that forces the user agent (aka the browser) to behave in the way that server running the application wishes to.

It's not disdain for paying. Netflix proved that. It's disdain for getting nickel and dimed and fleeced and losing access without warning.

Well, and there's a difference in usage. When I use Netflix, I'm usually either at my desktop computer or sitting on my couch, selecting a movie for myself to watch. It feels like a good old traditional media experience.

YouTube pops up everywhere, on every system I use. Sometimes I'm sitting down to watch something longer, even a movie, but often it's just links from friends or coworkers, or from news articles on Reddit or Hacker News. Sometimes it's lessons, sometimes it's breaking news, sometimes it's 5-second meme videos. I use it at work and at home. I might be on my wife's iPad, or my work phone, or some library computer.

I'm not viewing all those videos on my personal devices logged in using my own personal account. I don't feel comfortable logging in with my personal account everywhere.

And there's something especially annoying about constantly seeing ads on a service I'm paying for.

On top of that, logging in everywhere lets Google track everything I view--every random Reddit click--and Google's the single biggest data collector & exploiter I know. I'm paying them to let them track me.

All told, paying for YouTube feels kinda icky in a way that paying for Netflix does not. I do pay for YouTube Premium, but I still prefer to watch videos without logging in, (ed:) with an adblocker.

What I do have a disdain for with Netflix, is paying for the version with 4k access and then struggling to actually get the service I paid for.

Around two years ago I wanted to watch Squid Game on my MacBook Pro + external 4k monitor, and iirc still couldn’t get it working in 4k after various yak shaving. Perhaps it’s now supported, but it felt pretty ridiculous to me that I can’t even access the full service I’m paying for.

Actually I'm very predisposed to paying for YouTube. My experience with it however is that it presented me with ads for YouTube premium every 5 minutes and put ad screens in my way that were waaayyyyy to easy to click dozens of times a day. It wouldn't take a hint that I was interested but not ready to buy. I was trying to show someone a quick video on my phone, not revisiting my financial relationship with Google. After being treated like that, as much as I have the money and willingness to pay, I don't want to give them my money for a purely emotional reason. Some product manager somewhere at Google needs fired. Probably a lot of them.

What is it with the disdain for mental health, privacy or political mindfulness? Big tech don't feel like paying attention to people even if people use Youtube more than other streaming services combined. Maybe the issue is that big tech got so used to a decade of unlimited high-quality tracking for absolutely free?

Google has dumped so many gallons of urine into my cheerios over the years that I will never, ever pay them for a consumer service. They have spent literally decades now being absolute assholes to consumers. If they charged for Youtube from day 1 then maybe. But at this point the reputational harm is permanent.

I do pay for Patreon and Nebula. But Google will never get a cent from me.

I don’t mind paying. I do mind paying $15 and then see still ads (Thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this comment). Plus the algorithm keeps getting worse and worse.

I’d prefer to pay like $5. I don’t need YouTube music.

Sponsorblock is 95%+ effective against these

Whole point of youtube premium is getting rid of ads on mobile/tvs

Sure, and there are sponsorblock solutions for both mobile and TV

The hilarious thing about all the VPN ads is that they are collecting all the same tracking information as Google and Facebook and aren’t even protecting you from that existing tracking.

$5/mo without YouTube Music would be an easy buy for me. I’d gladly pay that to support creators, remove ads on my tv, and to stop having to sideload uyou+ on my phone. I have zero interest in YouTube music as Apple Music has great offline support on the watch for my backcountry rides.

I don’t understand this logic. Why do you think it would be cheaper without YouTube music? YouTube music literally is just YouTube. Every song on there can be found on YouTube, the only reason it’s even a separate app and included in premium is due to the lack of ads facilitating a better music listening experience.

Because YouTube themselves considers Music as an add-on, and was willing to have a cheaper Premium tier without Music in certain countries before they discontinued it.

https://9to5google.com/2023/09/26/youtube-premium-lite-shut-...

> Maybe the issue is that people got so used to a decade of unlimited high-quality videos for absolutely free?

Or the videos aren't that high quality, and are just barely at the level of value where people feel like the time spent watching (or leaving it on as background noise) was worth it, but not at the level of value where time spent+ads or money are worth it.

Like I've watched a LTT video before. I suppose I was very bored. Would I ever pay to watch it? No. Do I even think it was worth the time I spent watching? Probably not. It's like listening to some stranger at the pub tell a story. You might listen if it's interesting, but you probably wouldn't pay them for it.

There's tons of low quality, low effort stuff on there like vlogs, clean/cook/shop with me, hauls, etc. It's a hobby for the creator. People don't want to pay for it because it's not worth anything.

People will always rationalize their not paying. Tracking, ethics, whatever. Anything other than abstaining from use, lol.

Nope. Thanks to this site i (finally, and only about an hour ago) got newpipe from fdroid, subscribed to all my channels, and sod youtube, I'm not going back. An appropriate ad occasionally, no problem. But recently?? With newpipe there's a way out: i will happily contribute.

Using New pipe is not abstaining from YouTube, lol.

I'd gladly not use YouTube if the creators uploaded their videos somewhere else.

YouTube is too lucrative of a platform to pass up. It's not just hosting, but literally sending droves of viewers their way, and making sure those viewers are paying to watch in a way that enables those creators to earn a living. Take any large creator and 95-100% of their regular fanbase probably wouldn't follow them to another platform (unless it's so big that all/most of their favorite creators also go to the same platform).

Any other platform not only needs to offer cheap/free video hosting, but also send tons of users content similar to their interests in a way that enables new and up-and-coming creators to grow, and it needs to provide a way to pay out those creators, or there's a negative incentive to send any viewers to the other platform that strictly makes them no money.

Plenty of creators upload their things both to YouTube and Nebula, and I choose Nebula for the ones that do. The app isn't perfect, but it gets the job done.

Youtube's free to block whoever they want. People will gain access to what they want, independent of economic or governmental forces.

I think part of the disdain is that YouTube was ad-free until they ran all the competition out of business.

YouTube hasn't been ad-free for over 17 years.

Digital media can be copied infinitely for free. Thus delivering any benefit to infinite consumers. Thus multiplying that benefit infinitely.

They want to choke that? May as well tell the wind to stop blowing.

I was happy paying for YouTube Premium, but they just doubled the price in my geo. So yeah, i'm considering not paying.

Did you consider there's a population of people outsdide HN who don't make 6 figures and have to budget?

I'm sure there will be lovely things this community has to say about that demographic.

The person you are replying to answered in their comment: even the paid service has ads, and a lot of the premium content has been moved off of the platform.

Lack of trust. Google will find ways to enshittify YouTube even if you pay for it.

I spend a lot of money at Bandcamp because in exchange I get bits that I do what I want with. For some reason that's not as popular for video, but it would solve this issue pretty well.

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