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Comment by asimpletune | Hacker News Reader

I respect people’s right to use as lockers on their machines, but it bears mentioning that YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet. Paying for premium would go a long way to improving the situation for everybody, and I think it’s one area where if you can afford it, it’s not only right but also good.

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> Paying for premium would go a long way to improving the situation for everybody

The recent change to Amazon Prime, where everyone using "Prime Video" was already "paying for prime video", which recently added advertising, with a new $2.99/month no ads option, implies that even if everyone "paid for premium" the siren song of advertising money would be too difficult for Google/YT to ignore, and even premium would then eventually begin to be infested with advertising.

I agree, that siren song is toxic. At the same time I'd weigh youtube much more heavily than any common streaming service as it provides a weath of practical instruvtion which is refined via intraplatform competition and user feedback (comments).

From what I understand the people paying to not see ads are the ones that are more attractive to advertise to because of disposable income too. So there's absolutely no good way to guarantee that they won't make a change like this one.

Ok so pay for it until the day you’re imagining happens?

I totally agree with you that YT has enabled a lot of really talented people to be successful and creative in a whole new way, and has opened up opportunities for many people all around the world to live profitable lives, where before TV channels were the gatekeepers of that creativity.

But the ad supported model seems to have slipped past the fair-to-viewers into the completely obnoxious and unbearable to nearly all viewers, so something has to give. Additionally it seems like content producers are getting a smaller amount than they used to get so it's less of an attractive platform, probably more so since the competitors showed up.

I heartily agree. As an apprentice in the trades I was able to zoom forward at an incredible pace by learning from construction youtubers.

I met a guy who came out of poverty initially as a backhoe operator, how did he learn? YT, he literally mimiced fist person video of machine operation.

When I want to buy quality toold, ProjectFarm on youtube (of interest to anyone with even slight interst in tools and machines) provides a more objective and comprehensive analysis than any I've yet to see.

I've been struggling with this for a while. I object to a lot that google does and have had various problems with their services in the past, enough that I spent a good about of time trying to switch away from their products.

YouTube is the toughest one, since it's the videos created by people that I value and care about, rather than YouTube the product. I don't want people to stop producing good content, but I also don't want to support Google financially.

My compromise has been to use an ad-blocker, and to subscribe to the Patreon (or equivalent) of everyone who I watch regularly. It costs me more than a premium subscription would, but at least I feel my money's going where I want it to.

>YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet

From where I sit, YT looks like one of the worst inventions humanity has ever created.

These blanket statements are really not that valuable if you fail to mention by what measure you find it to be such a bad invention.

When I am responding to

> it bears mentioning that YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet

and you fail to comment on that blanket statement, your bias pierces the pretend mantle of objectivity in which you cloak yourself.

I am going to stick with what I said. One person says YouTube is incredibly good, another one that it is incredibly bad. No reasons are given that lead either of you to your assessments. So what insight have we gained?

Somehow both things are true, and I don't know how we disentangle them.

YouTube the site where people can dump videos is incredibly useful because there are visual tutorials for everything.

YouTube the site where people form parasocial relationships with flat-earth-fluencers and break their brains is the worst invention since leaded gasoline.

Some things cannot be disentangled. This is one of the biggest platforms in the Internet and you have to deal with the varying expectations of an incredibly diverse audience. Having to shape the policies on such platform in order to satisfy your users must be a very hard job as you never actually reach a "goal". All you can do is optimize the site for what you think the majority of users want from it and your own ethics. But tomorrow you might need to change direction entirely.

I am curious to see how this plays out for YouTube and all the social media platforms out there. I am certainly rooting for YouTube to be able to successfully walk that line as it is by far the most valuable platform to me personally.

I couldn't care less if all of Youtube ceased to exist tomorrow.

I think it would be a net gain for the world as people would flock to better platforms with less censorship.

Contemporary videos are like 1% of YouTube's true value. There PBs of footage that no longer exists anywhere but YouTube's servers. It's the modern era's Library of Alexandria.

And you want to burn it down because "censorship"... How revealing.

What are these better platforms with less censorship that host an unlimited amount of content for free?

Typical anarchist ideas.

Nobody would benefit from YouTube going down, only assholes who want to watch things collapse because they have no self worth.

YouTube is one of the biggest pilars of education, entertainment, knowledge and history on the internet. Billions of people have been entertained and educated with this website...

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