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Comment by _Algernon_ | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that advertisement business infects everything.

For instance, I could pay for Youtube Premium to ostensibly not be shown ads, but it doesn't change the fact that all the content[^1] in the ecosystem is still produced for maximizing watch time and/or being advertisement friendly.

I could pay for news, but that doesn't change the fact that the news is written to receive clicks from the non-paying users.

Paying for things does not help escaping the second order effects of advertisement.

[^1]: To a close approximation.

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I don’t understand this complaint in the context of YouTube. It’s the only major streaming service with plentiful new content that isn’t clickbait, focus-grouped, lowest-common-denominator, metrics-chasing trash. I can hop on and watch hours of jets flying through the Mach loop, people playing chess, and people machining metal. If those aren’t your thing, I bet there’s plenty of stuff that is.

Sure, there’s a lot of crap. But you don’t have to watch that.

> Sure, there’s a lot of crap. But you don’t have to watch that.

But even non-crappy content will be steered toward some direction by the advertisement, most videos are made just long enough to fit whatever is the new optimum time for revenue per view. And some subject will be censored to not displease advertisers.

Some people are not doing that, but it's simply because they don't rely on YouTube revenues.

The people who aren’t doing that still produce way more than 24 hours of quality content per day. And for those who do, I’ll judge them based on what they make, not how I imagine they decide what to make.

So your whole argument is just cherry picking? Sure if you ignore everything wrong, you can say the system is alright.

My gob is properly smacked by this reply.

I mean, yeah! Cherry-picking is the entire point of an on-demand video service. Are you just watching whatever it gives you in order? I seriously cannot comprehend what would possess someone to write this.

By way of analogy, large portions of Reddit have turned into every other social media hellscape.

Reddit is still awesome if you curate your subscriptions and avoid the big subs.

Is it cherry picking to say Reddit is awesome because I’ve carefully made it that way?

> Sure if you ignore everything wrong, you can say the system is alright.

This framing doesn’t make sense. It’s an ecosystem, and it’s not so much about “ignoring” things as much as it is about making active choices. If you go to a shopping district, there is nothing forcing you to shop at every store. If the district still has the stores you care about, shop at them.

> This framing doesn’t make sense. It’s an ecosystem, and it’s not so much about “ignoring” things as much as it is about making active choices. If you go to a shopping district, there is nothing forcing you to shop at every store. If the district still has the stores you care about, shop at them.

There ton of people that won't go to some shopping districts because the rest of the area is an intolerable mess.

In the same spirit, look a Twitter/X, sure, there still plenty of people making good content there, but you can't deny that the website policies are steering it in a peculiar direction, and lot of users choose to leave Twitter entirely to not be complicit.

> There ton of people that won't go to some shopping districts because the rest of the area is an intolerable mess.

But there is still a major difference between “this shopping area is mostly stores I don’t care about but has a few that I care about significantly” and “this shopping center is a complete nightmare and not worth wading through the nightmare for the the few stores I care about.”

I can easily think of a few real places in my city that fit into each category.

YouTube is still arguably in the first category.

A better analogy would be the internet. This place has enormous mountains of crap. And yet there's more than enough good stuff for it to be worth it to me to pay a decent amount of money for access.

I'm not paying for YouTube, really. I'm paying for access to the output of various creators. The service also includes access to a bunch of other creators I'm not interested in. And that's fine, I don't access them, just like I pay Verizon and T-Mobile but don't use their service to access instagram.com.

Do you not choose what to buy when you go to the supermarket?

You get to pick the cherries that you eat.

> Sure, there’s a lot of crap. But you don’t have to watch that.

The way people complain, I genuinely think they don't know about this option.

For example, Mr. Beast content isn't for me. But I was also living blissfully under a rock for years without knowing who the heck he was. Now that I know about him I simply don't click on his content and therefore never see it in my feed.

"But what if I click by accident?" - glad you asked. Simply delete it from your watch history and see your recommendations improve.

Either that, or “that stuff is bad” is meant to be understood as “nobody should watch it.”

Which is even dumber. How immature do you have to be to think you can dictate the tastes of others.

Recently I've been annoyed with Youtube Premium. I pay for an ad-free experience and do not see ads in the traditional (wait 5 seconds to skip) way, yet more and more content has inline product promotion where time is spent thanking a sponsor and pitching their product. So I'm paying not to avoid ads, but I'm still seeing paid promotion...

> I'm paying not to avoid ads, but I'm still seeing paid promotion...

It seems like you have shifted from having a problem with the platform to having a problem with the content producers. Can’t win?

People all the way down...

> where time is spent thanking a sponsor and pitching their product

I’ve been unsubscribing from folks who do that a lot. Instant unsubscribe if the product is questionable.

I’m not going to judge their business decision, but it tea sets an odd tone when I’m watching something informative and they bust out into a “someone paid me to say this”.

google for "sponsorblock" extension for your browser, crowdsourced data makes it skip all the promotions, intros, "like and subscribe" and all other unneeded parts.

And when you're at it, ublock origin also skips the youtube ads.

There's also: https://freetubeapp.io/ , but it's a constant cat and mouse game with youtube, where you now have to refresh a video a few times before it starts playing (then it works fine), until they upgrade the software and then it works, until youtube changes something again.

YouTube has a “jump ahead” built in - at least on the phone - which skips sponsored bits

SponsorBlock works great.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

It's an old-fashioned plug, and you can hit the skip button. Usually there's a banner of some sort that makes it even easier to know when the plug is done. If that's too much, then find a way to live without the show.

You know who is the best target demographic for selling stuff? People with money.

So that's who you want to show ads to.

And do you know a proxy for "have money"? Paying for premium, when there is free.

Therefore, every time you pay for premium, all the advertisers look and say "I'd pay a lot to show ads to that guy". At some point, the premium service includes ads, because of so much potential extra revenue!

And that's why I don't pay for premium.

I'll never understand why people are reluctant to pay for a monthly service because of something they might do in the future to make the service worse.

If they do that thing then just cancel! It's incredibly easy to do!

It’s especially weird because the one thing guaranteed to result in more ads is not paying. People spend a lot of money making content for YouTube and something has to pay for it.

We already have more ads. The "promise" is that, by paying, we will get no more ads. For now.

I didn't ask for that content. I don't understand why I have to pay it.

So do what I do and don’t watch it. Just don’t deprive the creators of revenue and then be indignant when everything is loaded up with ads and sponsored content because people need to pay rent.

Because if the service you pay for start to do what you expressively pay them not to do, your whole subscription since the beginning will feel like a waste.

Worst, your money was partially used against your interest, by financing people unilaterally altering a contract they made with you.

> your whole subscription since the beginning will feel like a waste.

This is such a bizarre way of looking at something. I've canceled many subscriptions because of changes made by the company and I never felt like the time I already paid for was a waste. I got the thing I was paying for, then it changed in a way I felt like it was no longer worth paying for so I stopped. It doesn't change the time I was using it at all.

If a company taking your money and using it to make the service works is your line in the sand I've got bad news for you about how almost every single companies uses the money you pay them.

And there have been a ton of things I just lost interest in over time and wasn't getting value from any longer, so I (usually, eventually) canceled. Doesn't typically mean my earlier subscription was a waste. When I got rid of my cable TV, doesn't mean I wished I never had it.

If your favorite restaurant changes their menu, does that make your past meals feel like a waste? It seems like a textbook economic transaction to buy when the deal is good and stop when it isn’t.

Restaurant aren't subscription based, you pay for a one-time meal.

The whole point of a subscription is to support an ongoing service _to you_, if your money is used to enshitify the service and make it work _against you_, there no point of paying it altogether, you will be better serve by piracy (as you don't provide them with money to enshitify it, nor to lobby against your interests).

“Your” money isn’t being used to work against you, you are voluntarily paying for what is currently on offer. They’ve announced major changes in advance so you have plenty of time to decide to cancel after the current month if the future service is not to your liking.

It’s rather entitled to think that your monthly payment gives you some kind of veto authority over their product plan. If you don’t like how they run their business, that doesn’t magically create the right to use their work on your terms.

"Might" is misleading. "Will" is more realistic.

You don't pay for premium because one day maybe it'll have ads?

The mental gymnastics people employ to not pay for content with either money or ad impressions is just silly.

> it doesn't change the fact that all the content[^1] in the ecosystem is still produced for maximizing watch time and/or being advertisement friendly.

That's just not true. There is an enormous amount of content on YouTube right now, which is made chiefly with quality in mind, by some of the most professional people in the industry. There's more than you could watch even if you watched for a thousand years.

You just have to use the like/dislike and subscribe functions, so the algorithm knows what you want.

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