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verdverm

You can see it as extortion or...

Paying for a product instead of being the product.

Huge quality of life improvement. How is it different from paying for Netflix and similar?

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> Paying for a product instead of being the product.

You're still the product. You think they aren't still collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web?

You can opt out of that without paying anything

You can opt out of the personalized ads, but you cannot opt out of the data collection, storage and correlation.

To the extent that it is relevant to what I was replying to, you absolutely can opt out of "collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web".

https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads

My ad blocker and Pi hole block that page, (un?)ironically.

Does Netflix try to scam you if you don't subscribe to the premium tier?

If it were ads for car insurance and lego, I don't think there would be the same concern.

Because YouTube takes money deliberately from criminals an ad supported version of Netflix would hardly have Get-Rich-Quick schemes advertised which you need to pay to avoid. Make no mistake, I've seen criminal scammer ads on YouTube.

You’re still the product. YouTube screwed up their monetization scheme so badly that any content worth watching still inserts its own non-Google ads directly into the videos. So I would be paying to remove ads and…still see ads.

There are two issues.

On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone.

Additionally it's a matter of user control and rights. They don't get to tell the user what their user agent does and what content it should fetch or display to the user or what code it should run.

It's their website, but it's my device.

The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away.

> On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone.

A lot of YouTube creators make their content for money. YouTube in this case is the layer between creator and watcher, making sure they get paid. Wether that is by ad money or subscription money. Before that, things were much more difficult for video creators.

> The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away.

The next step for YouTube is hopefully to put the entire site behind a login and remove all ads.

Google is an advertising company first and foremost, so I doubt that'll happen.

But, this kind of stuff is a big reason they want remote attestation so badly.

Video creators can also move to other platforms, or make other platforms that are subscribe only. It only takes a very small percentage of channels currently on YouTube to make for a high quality streaming platform that covers the interests and needs of a large part of potential subscribers.

It is also hilarious that the FBI also recommends using ad block. I might be sorry for smaller companies but Google contributed to this scams and now even the FBI is against their scheme.

Why not both?

-Every corporation in the world.

yup, I don't see YouTube as an outlier in this regard

I do really enjoy my ad free YouTube, 8 years and counting, the $20 / month for 5 accounts is very much worth it

I piggyback on a friend's account, for a small fee, so likewise.

I also run pi-hole at home, because while I understand the need for ads, I'm done with 23 ads, 15 flyouts, 1 video that will play in the corner until the end of time even though you obviously scrolled past it with zero intention of viewing it, 4 animated gifs, a pop-up chatbot window, etc. etc. etc.

We’re going to get to the section of this video about ad-free YouTube, but first, a message from our sponsor, VPNOfTheMonth! <insert some scare mongering directly into the video stream that premium doesn’t remove>

At least it's not ANOTHER League of Legends ad.

You can skip past those pretty easily. I let them play for creators I actually like, who also tend to pick less scummy sponsored ads. Some of them even make the sponsored content really funny or personal to them.

You'll find the same quality spectrum. At least I know that the creator is seeing more of the ad dollars.

Sure, but that still makes advertising paid YouTube as “ad-free” a lie and a scam.

that is a rather cynical and unconstructive perspective

1. sponsored ads are only in a minority of videos, so largely the platform is actually ad-free. I'm paying to not have YT ads, I did not expect my subscription to eliminate sponsored ads. Where is the lie?

2. paid YT is categorically a better experience and worth every penny, even with the occasional sponsored ad, which again, can be skipped

3. YMMV, it really depends on the content you chose to consume. I stay away from the most viewed creators, it's typically low quality

4. Direct payments for a product is a much healthier model than the ad supported model, imho.

The difference here is that the ads are not just neutral revenue generators, but they are actively harmful revenue generators.

I mean, you can see it that way, or you can realize that paying the mafia protection money actually is a fantastic way to keep both of your legs in working order.

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