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Comment by usernamed7 | Hacker News Reader

I really value youtube, but as long as google owns it I will never pay, never ever. Nor will I watch ads. But if youtube broke off one day and became independent like paypal did, i would gladly pay for it.

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Pro tip, if you have a VPN provider and set it to Ukraine, YouTube Premium comes out to only ~$2.7x/month. Makes it way more enjoyable for a fraction of the price.

Once you buy it, you dont have to keep your VPN or anything, it will always rebill at the $2.xx price each month.

If enough people do that, they will try counter measures.

For how much I watch and enjoy YouTube, paying full price is absolute worth it.

The family plan is a good deal too

That's an awesome note. Thank you.

Don’t do this. Google will ban your account. My friends have done this before in video games and have gotten their accounts perma banned months / years later.

For me it’s not about the money. It’s just that I will not (willingly) give a single cent to google. Ever.

If you're using vpns, some countries like Albania simply don't get ads delivered at all

I'm interpreting your comment as you're using ad blockers and also not paying for a subscription.

If that's the case, it's probably true that robbing YouTube of the revenue to cover their R&D and data center costs is covered in whatever insurance and investment risks they manage.

However, also robbing the content creators you're enjoying of the revenue they need to fund their content, is definitely in some unethical grey area. Still true, even if the creator makes only a fraction of their total revenue through ad sense.

There's no violence involved, it can't be robbery.

Or you can adblock and donate on Patreon etc. to your favourite channels. Not every channel you watch will benefit, but a much higher percentage of your money goes to creators, who generally get a less than fair deal from platform holders. Same goes for buying music on Bandcamp + pirating, versus a music streaming subscription.

> However, also robbing the content creators you're enjoying of the revenue they need to fund their content, is definitely in some unethical grey area.

I’m curious what’s your intuition about the opposite situation.

If I’m paying for YouTube and I’m supposed to get an AD free experience but a creator has baked in ad read for their sponsor, is the creator then in the wrong?

If I don’t click ads and purchase products, it doesn’t matter whether I have them or not.

I’m not robbing anyone since I don’t click on ads anyway. I don’t generate people revenue. I’m not “in commerce”

I'm not robbing anyone by blocking ads. I control what my computer loads and processes. How others make their money is not my problem.

Because Google <insert reason here>, you think you are entitled to accessing it for free?

They make it freely available, so yes, as a matter of fact, I am. I also have total control of how my computer resources are used. Ad blocking is always ethical.

Paypal didn't "break off": it was spun off by eBay. It's not like a division can secede and declare independence.

Not with that attitude.

I don't think I'm likely to pay for YouTube either, but for a slightly different reason: I'm afraid that if there are ever any account issues my whole Google account would be banned. I notice that I've been watching less as they ramp up advertisements.

Yep, a confusing case where a monopoly position actually managed to hurt the company…

>I really value youtube, but as long as google owns it I will never pay, never ever.

I really value youtube, and I do pay for premium. It's not expensive. We use youtube far more than any other streaming service, and it costs less than all the others.

Clearly you don't value it if you don't want to compensate them or the creators for the content.

It is possible to value a service and still loathe the company providing it.

How the creators make money is neither my problem nor my responsibility.

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