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Comment by wesselbindt | Hacker News Reader

From my end the decision to not use the Google product comes from two places. Firstly, any money I send to Google is probably a net negative for the human race as a whole (though the same could probably be said for Spotify). Secondly (and much more importantly for me personally), YouTube is quite addictive, and having premium would enable me. If someone offered me a music streaming subscription with a bit of free crack cocaine on the side, I would not take it over someone offering me just the subscription, regardless of the price (up to a point)

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As a counterpoint, YouTube is a vast chasm of highly educational and worthwhile media. There's no other space like it for long-form independent educators, and it's a creative space we need to protect by keeping it economically viable for YouTube. At least until comparable spaces (with sustainable audiences) exist.

There are plenty of better alternatives to YouTube for independent educational media. For example, Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera which allow independent educators and don't rely on poor recommendation algorithms or incessant advertising (both from the platform and in sponsorships)

Better alternative in some regards, maybe, but for discoverability, there is no bigger platform than YT. It's the Walmart of media consumption with a "you're going to make it up in volume" concepts

I've sampled all of those services. None of those have comparable, sustainable mass audiences like YouTube. They also lack integration with my other consumption, which YouTube provides. And in general, the quality of independent educational content I find on YouTube is quite good and is often a product of YouTube culture itself, now that we are no longer in the first generation of YT creators, and I quite like the culture and its aesthetic.

Udemy, Skillshare and Coursera have failed to create a product which attracts me, and the general population. Their focus on specific content and consumption habits is both a blessing and a curse, depending on who you ask.

I don't know about Udemy or Skillshare, but I gave up on Coursera a long time ago because almost everything on there seems to be of a "X for non-X-majors" variety. They tend assume no prerequisites and are generally super watered down.

YouTube is also a vast repository of conspiracy bullshit with a recommender algorithm that is happy to start feeding you as much of it as you can autoplay.

This is my objection to paying them. They push a lot of ragebait. They have a lot of longform advertising that is just raw conspiracies or medical quackery.

My understanding is that 55% of your YouTube premium payment goes to the creators you watched to compensate them for lost ad dollars (and I believe creators actually earn slightly more per premium viewer than per ad-supported viewer). So in some ways, if you pay for YouTube premium you are actually paying to drown out conspiracy theories and ragebait content with whatever content it is that you prefer.

Spotify directly funds/endorses Joe Rogan.

Yes, and you should disable autoplay and browse with intent. You should network with others and use your network as a discovery pipeline instead of relying on an opaque algorithm.

After a while, the algorithm aligns somewhat anyway and you occasionally get a good recommendation from the front page or related videos. But first, you have to curate your tastes so that it knows what to pull.

I could generalize your comment to say that the world wide web itself contains a vast repository of useless or malicious content and is a dangerous pipeline to extremism. But we find corners of it that don't facilitate toxic content, and we ensure the livelihood of those who produce useful things for us. They benefit from a narrowcasting service with a large audience and ad network such as YouTube. Until one of us can provide them a better service, that's what they're stuck with.

Companies with billion of dollars in profit yearly are not charity cases and no one should feel bad about not giving them money.

Who cares about a corp, my comment was focused on keeping creators employed. I do think the splits are terrible, and I recommend directly supporting creators you enjoy.

You said keep Youtube economically viable, not directly pay creators.

keep Youtube economically viable... so that creators can get paid.

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