I use Adblock, but also believe creators should be paid and YouTube itself cannot exist for free. If you’re not willing to pay and also don’t want ads, what’s the solution?
The solution is to allow the people who want to pay for premium value to pay and to push delivery onto peer-to-peer delivery like BitTorrent did 20 years ago so that the expense is minimal and shared by the people who actually watch by hosting what they consume.
It’s not hard. Don’t buy the corporate lies on this one.
This is 99 percent less expensive delivery of content YouTube gets for free but poor Google needs help with expenses? Not likely.
They should be encouraging premium subscription by creating premium services and and supporting it with sponsorship for premium content and access to content creators. We already have many working models like this. They just have too many Hollywood execs and MBAs who are so deeply uncreative and unable to be risk takers or jeopardize their cushy job by making innovative suggestions like this that they can’t come up with any other path. They have a culture problem with their products honestly.
We don’t need Internet video to be shit cable over IP networks. Google could actually innovate here.
> Subject: Your Premium Lite membership will be discontinued
> Thank you for being one of our first Premium Lite members.
> We’re writing to let you know that after October 25, 2023, we will no longer offer your version of Premium Lite. While we understand this may be disappointing news, we continue to work on different versions of Premium Lite as we incorporate feedback from our users, creators, and partners. [emphasis mine on the bullshit]
> To show our appreciation, we’re offering a 1 - month trial of Premium (even if you’ve had a trial before). With Premium, you can watch videos ad - free, offline, and in the background. Plus, stream music ad - free in the YouTube Music app.
I don't need nor want the other features, just no ads, and paid for it for 2 years. Then YouTube decided to fuck me over and force me into a more expensive subscription tier, fuck them, I'll use ad blockers for as long as they work.
I certainly won’t pay for YouTube, and if I have to deal with ads, I just won’t watch.
My conclusion is: Good.
Traditionally, storytellers and musicians were an important part of society. They were the medium through which ideas and even information would spread. Then came troupes, then came middlemen, then came companies, then came corporations. Each step along the way, the artist was less about her art, and more about the business of making art.
This can be acceptable to many, and I won't knock anyone who enjoys a good Hollywood blockbuster. What I would argue though, is that the pure artist who did it for the art first, and the business second, made better art.
In conclusion; fuck Google, let that dumpster fire burn out.