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Comment by dschuetz | Hacker News Reader

If I was a stakeholder in YT I would be worried about users and creators leaving the platform, because YT has become increasingly and more aggressively anti-consumer. I do not mind if the creators incorporate sponsor ads into their content, but what YT does to the user experience is just awful. Inserting multiple, low quality, loud, long unskippable ads into one video, who the heck would want to watch that?! It's clear to me that Google is pressing on to make users buy subscriptions. It's basically a dark pattern, closely resembling coersion.

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Don't creators get paid based on how many ads are shown/clicked? They are probably excited by the idea that their revenue will increase by (% of people who use adblockers).

The goals of creators and youtube are more closely aligned than the goals of creators and their audience.

Youtube-served ad revenue is a pittance compared to in-video sponsorships. Every time the served ads piss someone off enough to not continue watching (and therefore deny the video a recorded "view") it probably costs the creator more than they would get from the slightly increased revenue of more aggressive ads across dozens of viewers.

Not really, they get far more from sponsors and merch

This is not true at all. As others have mentioned, sponsored spots get a producer much more revenue, and unskippable preroll and midroll ads are likely to make a person just not watch the video at all (which in turn makes the sponsored spots less profitable).

Leaving to where? That’s the thing.

Maybe people aren't actively leaving YouTube, but they are using a lot less of it for other platforms like TikTok.

Nebula for one

Nebula's great for long-form content creators, but it's not a place where an amateur can put up their hobby tutorials.

Until one day it becomes just such a place by developing a free tier.

The EU, since they actually give a damn about antitrust, needs to look long and hard at:

* YouTube running at a loss for years until they achieved overwhelming market dominance. We might all be using Vimeo or something else.

* The forced bundling of YouTube Music. Leveraging a monopoly for a foothold in another market is also not okay.

Vid.me! Its pretty much a copy of youtube but no-ads and no subscription needed. Has tons of content and lots of creators have started channels there.

Oh wait, thats right, it went bankrupt in 2017. They released a statement saying "Nobody wants to watch ads, nobody wants to pay a subscription, we have no revenue stream."

Creators on YouTube get to decide how many ads appear and when they appear on each video they create (as long as they're in the partner program, which is open to basically anyone with >1000 subscribers).

If the videos you're watching have a lot of ads at inconvenient times it's because the creators wanted them there.

people have been using ad blockers for years, which probably prompted showing the more annoying ads. the option is use an adblocker or buy premium. if people are unwilling to do either, then just don't use the platform.

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