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Comment by racecar789 | Hacker News Reader

I would pay for YouTube premium if you can afford it. The cost is pretty reasonable and 55% of the subscription goes to content creators. It's not a huge amount but probably similar to what a creator would make if ads were shown.

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I remember hearing from some creators that youtube premium watch time is MUCH more valuable than ad-based people. I don't remember how much though.

I subscribed until they price hiked it like 45% in one go a couple of months ago in my country. Now the price for it is equal to, or in some cases even more expensive than the services that actually produce their own high quality movies/tv shows.

so that's a 45% cut for Google

makes the widely hated app store look generous by comparison

The overhead for something like youtube is insane. There is good reason there is no competitor to it.

there are competitors (dailymotion, vimeo, ...)

they're just not widely used because it's the usual winner take all

people are also going to be queuing up to peer with Google so they don't have to pay for transit

unlikely to be the case for their competitors

But it is not possible to use it without creating a Google account. I should not need to sign in to watch videos, especially when that makes all efforts at avoiding tracking null.

I get why you might not want to create a Google account, but how is it even possible to operate without one? I'm genuinely astonished by people who are able to get by in 2024 without having ever created an account on Google.

I have google accounts that I created a decade ago but I can't remember the last time I logged on one, except to log on gmail and clean the box in private browsing.

I basically only keep them because I used my real name and don't want anyone to steal an account/personnal info I might have created with that gmail address and impersonate me.

I don't really see what is difficult in operating without a google account.

I think the point about _having_ a Google account is one thing, but then there's the fact of having to be logged in. I use many of the Google services, but I don't have the need to be logged in while using YouTube for 99% of the time (if not 100%).

What do you need one for, if you're not in the Google ecosystem?

Just about the only thing I can think of is Google Docs. But if you need that for work, chances are you're using your work account for that, not your personal one.

the more it becomes "genuinely astonishing" that people can use the internet without $ProprietaryThing, the more important it is to resist using $ProprietaryThing wherever possible and at all costs. they have been pulling out all the stops for 10+ years to make it seem like you're required to have a google/icloud account to participate in society. it's slimy and endangers the neutrality of the internet.

There's always an excuse, right? (Looking forward to the multi paragraph reply on why it's outrageous that you should pay)

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