People who refuse to pay for a service and just drain expensive resources, aren't really "users" in terms of being worth focusing on.
Edit for the angry down voting hackers: Try searching YouTube next time you have a problem with your vehicle or household appliance. There is usually somebody there who made a video showing you exactly how to fix it by yourself, so you don't have to buy a new one or pay somebody to fix it. There is no better resource AFAIK.
They are positioning YouTube as a super-premium product (relative to other streaming services). An underlying takeaway might be that advertisers no longer value users "on very little income" in a positive real-rate environment.
(I'd prefer if YT would prevent creators for advertising in Premium videos, but I bet that would not be accepted happily either.)
...alongside advertisements. They do get a share.
I don't think most people who use ad blockers understand that the ads are literally the price you pay for the service. If you think your time is worth more than the ad length, work for an hour and pay the subscription. I know it sounds crazy when I put it this way, but there's no such thing as free internet video.
Support Nebula. Support PeerTube. Pay them.
I paid YouTube Premium Lite to get rid of ads, I will not pay 2x for the same feature since I do not need offline, Music, nor background play, if they decided to cut my use case from their offering by forcing me to pay extra rent then I can decided to not pay them and use an adblocker.
I do not need to bend over for a digital feudal lord.
You are either being extremely naive about the state of the internet in 2024, or do not use YouTube for the content I do, or are just being obtuse to try to make a point.
"No one is forcing you" is a non-sequitur, it's a thought-terminating cliche that does not work when platforms have taken over and fenced off huge parts of the internet, c'mon. I'd love to avoid YouTube if there was another option, there simply isn't.
Comparing YouTube with Hulu and BBC is... Just stupid. What do these services have in common apart from "they display videos"?
Please, read this: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/
Which are now also starting to add ads to their "basic" offerings, even though the "basic" offer is costing more than the "full package" used to cost 2-3 years ago.
Let me summarize: I do not accept the premise that I owe them anything for viewing the videos that are publicly available. I do not accept the premise that they are entitled to their business model. I do not accept the premise that they can dictate how I watch the video or how my browser (aka the user agent) must behave.
If they do not want to serve content for customers that do not pay, they need to authenticate and paywall their site. Destroying the competition by price dumping and changing the rules after you are a de-facto monopoly is not only immoral, it is illegal.
They fenced of parts of the internet, there's no way to compete with Google on YouTube, there's no way to create an alternative marketplace to Amazon, they control these now and we all need to pay rent.
If they don't, someone else will.
I will gladly pay content creators that leave youtube and set up their own distribution channel, though.
It would be cool if some other platform appeared, that paid creators better. But YouTube is the only platform letting anybody be a paid creator that exists for video. Expecting creators to set up their own distribution channel and payment platforms would mean that only creators who are also web developers deserve to be paid.
YouTube in 2024 is also completely different to YouTube in 2014. It has much more quality content than all other streaming platforms combined, just because of the immense of amount of content there. If you set up your subscriptions right, it is a good experience.
Why is that only YouTube can pay so much? If no competitor can come close to them, does it occur to you that perhaps this is a problem?
Of course you don't have to let them off the hook. If you don't like them, don't watch them. That's how boycotting works. You don't need to pay them any mind at all. There is plenty of room for competition against YouTube, as evident by YouTube not even being the largest service in the sector. That is still Netflix and cable TV. And they pay their content creators much more than YouTube do, but only the content creators that they choose for you to watch.
Simply "boycotting" won't do much here. The idea is to find a way to signal to content creators that relying on Youtube is a losing proposition.
Why not? They're not forcing anybody to watch their videos. You know this. And they're explicit about ad-blockers not being welcome. YouTube is not a losing proposition, it is the only platform accepting everybody as content creators. You haven't provided an alternative.
But I hope that the entire platform becomes premium only and ad-free. That would be a fair solution for everybody.
They operated their business at a loss until they were the only alternative.
Remember Joost? Remember Vimeo? Again, why do you think that no other competitor managed to compete with YouTube? What is more likely to happen: Google has created a product so inherently good that no one can even come close to it, or Google has cheated its way into a winning position?
> They're explicit about ad-blockers not being welcome.
"Not being welcome" is not something they can enforce in a contract and there is already legal action against them in the EU, because they can not discriminate against users of ad-block without collecting user data.
> But I hope that the entire platform becomes premium only and ad-free. That would be a fair solution for everybody.
I wish that as well, but it would require them to willingly stop with their (unethical) practices that put them at an advantage. Do you realistically think this is going to happen?
I don't think it's out of the question. All the largest YouTube competitors operate on this model. Customers are used to it.
That's a cop-out.
Let me put another way: what odds do you give for them closing down YouTube for non-paying customers in the next 3 years? If we make a bet where I pay $10.000 that they will not close, and you have to pay $1.000, do you take it?
What is the real value in YouTube? It's the videos, and there's a much greater amount of videos and a much greater amount of the highest quality videos on YouTube than on any other platform. Yet, many more people pay for Netflix and cable. As long as YouTube has the free, ad-supported tier, many people will not pay for the product. Only because of psychology and the way that "free" messes with people's reasoning. If YouTube became paid only, I think a lot of consumers would rethink.
But do I expect that this is going to happen? No.
You really don't see a problem here? Do you think that people should not react to this complete disregard for ethics? Do you think that people should just accept that content creators (who are in on it and stand to gain from that) are just victims in this system and should still be protected?
Or pay for Nebula. Or any others.