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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

> profits soar beyond what they deserve, people will continue to use adblockers

How do we as a society decide whether these profits are "deserved"?

Not concerned with what society thinks, but personally I think Alphabet were only ever able to buy youtube out due to lack of anti-trust enforcement so IMO 0% is deserved and I feel no guilt whatsoever blocking their ads. If I like a content creator I'll support them specifically, the corporate vultures who bought the platform are owed nothing

Google bought YouTube, and so many years ago that most current Google products didn't exist. I can't personally see anti-trust having been an issue at all at the time.

>If I like a content creator I'll support them specifically, the corporate vultures who bought the platform are owed nothing

I absolutely love the YouTube ads discourse.

Sure, you will support all of the creators independently, but you're too cheap to pay for no ads for a great product (which shares fees with creators and provides them with tools, by the way, plus other features) to "stick it to the corporations". Meanwhile, you likely subscribe to at least one of Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music etc.

This is the perfect example of "if you like the product, pay for it." There's a ton of value YouTube Premium, both on the creator and consumer sides.

It's not a "great product", the creators are the only thing that gives it value. The platform itself is a parasitic monstrosity that only serves corporate interests, which are the motivation for every change they make. The dislike button removal being a recent example, not to mention the insufferable advertising practices, their complicity in DMCA shenanigans, and the rise of ridiculous language like 'unalived' instead of 'kill' because it hurts ad revenue, it goes on and on. Their behavior as the stewards of youtube has been utterly reprehensible and I won't be paying them for it

Look, we get it: you don’t like Google and that’s a fair position but you’re still shafting the people who make the video you like. If you don’t like YouTube, don’t use it: every time you watch a video there, the person who created it gets the message that they have to be on YouTube because nobody watches their stuff anywhere else.

The end of this cycle is DRM and ads becoming part of the content. YouTube can do that because your refusal to stop using their service only cements their market share.

Believe me I try, but one person can't do much against the network effect. I'm only interested in a few creators and they only upload to Youtube or other major corporate platforms because thats where the viewers are, what's a peon like me supposed to do? Rip their stuff and reupload it on peertube or something?

Not watch it? Let the artist know you’d like to pay directly if they don’t already have some alternative options?

My point is simply that continuing to use YouTube helps maintain their market share. If you don’t like them, you have to stop helping them.

They couldn't shaft the people who make the videos they like as hard as YouTube does if they made it their single life goal.

YouTube pays them between 40-70% of ad revenue.

Ad blocker users pay 0%.

> Sure, you will support all of the creators independently, but you're too cheap to pay for no ads for a great product

It’s not a great product. The player is absolutely terrible and goes out of its way to remove features that the OS player provides. The company is just another rent-seeking monopolist. It’s a product that I have to use, because it’s basically the only game in town after their bait and switch, having driven all competition to the ground when YouTube was free. I am glad to pay for Nebula and a couple of Patreons, but I cannot support Google willingly in this case.

They are not trying to win me over. They are trying to bully me into accepting the new deal they are forcing on us. I won’t comply.

> There's a ton of value YouTube Premium, both on the creator and consumer sides.

I’d be happy to if they were not trying to force their rubbish YouTube music thing as well. Again, they are not acting in good faith. Again, I do support Nebula, I am not against the concept of paying for videos itself.

> It’s not a great product

So presumably none of this affects you because you don't use it?

There are plenty of products and services that I use despite them being not great or even consumer hostile in some cases. We don’t live in a fantasy world where we always do nice things.

What this means, however, is that I do what I can to de-enshitify what can be (and the less ethical the company, the fewer qualms I have about doing this, meaning I have zero issues with blocking Google and Meta trackers and analytics, and I have no respect for companies who don’t respect me and try to shove ads down my throat), and I jump ship the second there is an alternative.

The current deluge of ads feels less like an attempt to monetize, and more like an attempt to irritate me into paying for Youtube red (premium? plus? I don't know what it's called these days). This makes me less willing to shell out.

Youtube has allowed its algorithm to prioritize recommending radicalizing conservative content to people that have watched nothing but videos that have to do with videogames. That's not a model I want to support. That also makes me less willing to shell out.

I also (irrationally) still hold a grudge from when they took away the ability to play videos on the youtube app in the background in order to promote premium, which added back the functionality. This makes me less willing to shell out.

Content creators have for years been talking about how easy it is to get demonetized, how the payments get lower, how it's harder and harder to sustain a channel, how without clickbait and icon bait it's harder to get videos noticed, etc etc. This makes me incredibly unwilling to shell out.

So, to sum it up: If YouTube does a better job of policing their ad-content and makes them less overtly obnoxious, takes any steps at all to moderate the gaming-content to alt-right content pipeline, and restores their app's ability to play in the background without the premium version, and, probably most importantly of all, starts treating smaller content creators better and improving discovery of high quality, creative videos (over lowest-common-denominator clickbait bs) I'll consider paying them a monthly fee.

FWIW Alphabet never bought YouTube. Google bought YouTube and still owns it, Alphabet is a holding company for Google which also took ownership of some other companies for better separation and most likely tax reasons, but YT remained a subsidiary of Google

By passing laws criminalizing certain business models. Alternatively, by choosing where to spend our money. If it's legal and people continue to patronize the business, then the profits are entirely deserved.

"Deserved" only ever relates to other people's money, not your own.

We install an ad blocker.

Pass tax laws?

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