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YouTube Premium is a very reasonably priced service that actually results in more money going to the creators of videos than watching ads does.

+1 I can understand people being annoyed by in video sponsorship if it’s done too much, but if you’re not paying for premium and you’re complaining about ads you’re not worth taking seriously.

Being able to pay to remove ads is one of the best things about the new media ecosystem. When I go to my parents house and see them watch cable it’s dystopic how many ads there are for a service with primarily trash content that’s still ridiculously expensive.

People who have no ads AND don't pay a penny look at you the same way you look at your parents.

It's dystopic how much you're willing to pay for something that is already free and effortless.

I'm sure the people stealing stuff from Walgreens in SF also think the rest of us are chumps, but that doesn't make them right.

I'm happy to pay to support the people making stuff I like - and the ability to do that directly instead of indirectly via ads (which I hate) is nice.

Goods in Walgreens are fundamentally dissimilar to YouTube videos.

When you steal something from Walgreens, a legal person has had private property unjustly taken from them that prevents the rightful owner from using or obtaining benefit from the scarce physical good (in Walgreens' case, sale of that good).

Conversely, even full-blown piracy of copyrighted content does NOT deprive the owner of private property, there is no prevention of the rightful owner to watch the video, nor is the rightful owner prevented from obtaining benefit, because there was no scarce physical good lost.

Courts might say you can "own" an idea. I disagree, it's plainly and obviously ridiculous to compare a speaker or some snacks to a infinitely reproducible digital file, to say nothing of a single stream of an infinitely reproducible digital file that was intentionally uploaded to a platform that makes content available to non-paying users.

A misconception I frequently see repeated is that if something can be copied effortlessly, then that becomes an argument for abolishing the concept of ownership in that domain.

The mistake here is seeing it as a zero-sum game. The goal of IP rights is not to prevent party A from “depriving” party B of their property. Believe it or not, understanding that copying IP does not destroy the original is not some galaxy brain level thinking only available to the enlightened. Rather, the goal is to encourage the creativity and innovation that produces more of such intellectual property overall; offering a degree of control over your own IP is a mechanism[0] of getting there.

A shining example of that is copyleft licensing. The concept of IP ownership powers GPL: in order to say “you must contribute back or disclose your source”, in order to give the assurance that programmer contributions will benefit the world rather than get embraced and extinguished by a megacorp, you must be able to execute the aforementioned control over the IP. Free and open software—including gems like Linux (probably the most popular OS in the world), Blender, etc.—flourished because of this control, not despite it. Many people, in their self-righteous crusade for free movies and stuff, completely miss that point.

So, if anything, it is the opposite. The difficulty of stealing or copying a physical object already acts as a natural deterrent, which is why something that can be expropriated with no effort should require more explicit protection, not less. This should make intuitive sense to anyone who can see the value of intellectual property and it being the driving force of innovation.

[0] If someone has an alternative mechanism in mind, I welcome a description of how it would work.

Just because a good is non-rival does not mean it therefore should be free.

For a similar example, drug discovery often takes billions of dollars of investment - but once discovered is very inexpensive to copy. Does that mean once discovered it should be (nearly) free for anyone to manufacture?

What would you consider the second order incentives of that kind of societal structure?

These arguments when given a tiny bit of thought to the incentives they create fall apart instantly. It's a good way to end up in a communist type of social failure where nothing is created and everything is scarce.

The goal of these laws is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" - it's about creating incentives that benefit the creator and the society. That's the purpose.

Pharmaceuticals and YouTube videos are not the same thing.

Why must they be treated identically when it comes to intellectual "property" law?

Doesn't it make much more sense to offer more protection and incentives to lifesaving medications than to trite clickbait and video game livestreams?

Why are we conflating the value of those two?

Since we're not starting from a principled approach that acknowledges that nobody can "own" an idea, and instead going with a consequentialist approach - what are the horrific, severe consequences of not giving a few pennies in ad revenue to someone uploading a compilation video of other people's work that justify treating that the EXACT same way we treat lifesaving drugs?

To be clear, I'm not proposing graduated IP protection (I am the abolitionist camp when it comes to IP), I'm pointing out that if you're really primarily concerned about the harms of second order effects from lack of innovation incentives, then easily 90%+ of all copyright-protected content (memes, reaction videos, TikTok dances) should get zero protection under your own logic, as there is questionable social value (if not outright negative), and essentially zero negative ramifications of not incentivizing that kind of slop.

Consequentialism may not be the tool you want to rest your argument on if your argument is that every single video on YouTube deserves just as much copyright protection as pharmaceuticals.

I’m not against it, because you are correct that the cost to make a copy is near zero, but let’s not go full self-delusion that the content has zero cost.

Oh, yeah, it's dystopian that you pay for a service you use and the creators who make your content. What a ridiculous statement.

You know servers aren't "free and effortless", right? Nor the storage drives or the bandwidth. Nor are the engineers or creators who make it all happen. If you block ads and you don't pay for an ad-free alternative, you're a leech on the system and making good actors pay more.

I don't really care about it too much - ads offend me too and I don't really respect modern IP law as it is handled, etc. But the sheer audacity on display in your comment is palpable.

If you're going to be a thief, at least be honest with yourself and don't act like all the bakers should be thieves too. That's just a world without bread.

I suspect this reasonable ad-free pricing will only last as long as needed to gain the majority of users on board. Video hosting costs will have to rise (there are ever more videos being created; you can't host all of them indefinitely available at everyone's fingertips at low cost) and they will have to increase prices to keep up.

Not that this implies you shouldn't get premium, but just worth keeping in mind I think.

It also results in more money going to Youtube/Google LLC/Alphabet Inc.

There are many wonderful videos and video-makers on youtube - but I think the platform has been a net negative for creativity, and for humanity, in many ways. Hence I personally would never support them with my money.

We haven't ever ran the counterfactual, and maybe there's some reason we can't or won't. But I would absolutely love to see youtube without youtube - no middleman, direct payments to the video-makers.

I'm not proposing a technical discussion here on what such a platform might look like or whether it's feasible - I just mean culturally, I'd love to see what videos we would come up with if we weren't constantly adjusting to suit the all-powerful and unknowable "algorithm".

I think this pressure to conform to the algorithm, to always chase more views, subscriptions, and comments, to frame every choice around that, has probably been much more prohibitive on creativity than we are able to imagine.

Why do you think the platform is a net negative? You claim it is a net negative for humanity. Yet most how tos are in you tube. Plus there are tons of learning materials. Seems like a positive to me. Creativity? Seems like there is a lot of creative content as well. So I'm not sure why you think that is also a negative. Yes it sucks when the framework wants to make money. But the framework is expensive. Now maybe more needs to go to the content creates. But the underlying framework deserves to make money as well.

It also results in more money going to Youtube/Google LLC/Alphabet Inc.

yup, they should run this whole service free of charge, no ads and no subscription :)

I'm not saying I want them to run the whole service free of charge, I'm saying I'd consider it a gain for the species if the business closed down. I look forward to alternative ideas (with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment) being tested out.

The TV era held some promise but steadily declined, and the Youtube era has went similarly. The audiovisual onslaught continues. Technically competent people on here are innoculated against the realities of the average usage on these platforms, which equates to brain-rot of the lowest calibre.

with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment

this sounds amazing but it can’t be done. no one is going to 79 websites to watch things from 79 different artist. the middleman are core evil part not just in this area but many others but I can’t see how this kind of society we have built can function without it

It wouldn't have to be 79 websites, obviously - there's RSS, for example. But there's also ten other things that already exist, and probably ten other things that don't exist that neither of us could imagine.

I know that if you live in one place, in one time, and everyone does one thing around you and acts like it's the only thing that ever existed, that it's really (really, really) tempting to think it's the only thing that could exist. But it's completely false. Loads of obvious seeming things are totally false, and this is definitively one of them.

Not only is it possible that we'll have a totally different society one day, and maybe even one where we have no to extremely few middlemen, but since Pascal and de Fermat we've known it to be roughly 100% likely! You can completely depend on the fact it will happen!

YouTube Premium is some of the best money I spend. Just buy it if you have the money. 55% goes to creators.

One of my handful of follows puts out multiple 2 hour videos a day sometimes, almost every day. I hardly watch, but I always throw it on and let it play through, and will replay it on mute while doing other things, just so this guy with 1.8k views is getting a bigger share of my youtube premium money. I don't participate in the channel, like I said, I really hardly watch, but monthly I have been getting free memberships to his channel since I started doing it.

Almost every video I watch these days has a sponsored segment that ends up taking around 1/10th of the video’s total run time. Better than TV, but if I’m paying for the service I’m not willing to watch any ads.

YouTube Premium ads a button to skip sponsored segments.

It's worth noting that sponsorship segments are supplemental income. The more they're skipped, the less they're paid out in the future. Some creators rely on that when their partnership money on the platform can't cover expenses on its own.

It sucks, but those are not priced into the payment for the platform to remove their ads. So this devaluation of sponsored segments can be seen in an increasingly large number of content creators having member-only videos that require a Patron subscription.

I'm not defending them or saying you should or should not watch the ads (I don't). But just explaining the reality and that there's not currently a great alternative.

Where ?

I'm nominally a premium member (at least it's on trial) but I've not seen that button.

I'm about to ditch the trial but I might change my mind if the sponsorship stuff is automatically skippable.

Bottom right of the video about when the ad starts. I forget the name, something like "jump to content".

For some videos that aren't marked by the creator, I think it's heuristics based, so more niche videos it doesn't always appear.

I can’t say I’ve noticed that, even once you mentioned it, on any of the videos I’ve watched.

Perhaps I’m too “niche” :(

sponsorblock + uBO.

Giving into the wishes of tyrants (pay us or else we're going to saddle you with ads) never weakens the power of the tyrants, it only strengthens and encourages them.

Ahh, the tyrants refusing to provide free content for you that costs money to produce, and not get any compensation.

Tell us your suggestions. Exposure bucks?

Google doesn't spend a cent producing the content on YT (user-generated).

Also, they did provide free content produced by others without compensation. They have for many years, long before ads showed up.

That's one way of viewing it. The other way to view it is that YouTube pays tens of billions per year for content. Easily more than Netflix does.

Now, it is true they don't finance the production of that content up front, but then again they also don't get any rights to the works either. The original creators retain full ownership, unlike in traditional media production.

And? Don't make the mistake of thinking I have any love for Google. Or ads.

But you're no better than Google, in this case, taking the free content produced by others without compensation.

Except you're also acting self-righteous and superior about doing so.

Don't forget that Google provided all the hosting, storage, and advertising for the creator's content. So there is, in fact, a service being provided.

They're worse than Google in this exchange.

Lol... Implying I'm worse than the company that voluntarily complied with the illegal conspiracy by NSA employees to spy on the whole country via corporations as a loophole around the fourth amendment, to lie about it to the general public, and to lie about it to congress.

I'm worse than them for the grave, unforgivable sin of... viewing videos that other people put on the internet (without compensation) for the sole purpose of enabling other people to view the video... while I had the "wrong" browser extension installed?

Am I getting all this correctly?

> In this exchange

Literacy is dead.

This conversation between us is an "exchange". If you want disambiguation, write less ambiguous posts.

Paying for streaming services used to result in zero ads too, and now lots of services either don't offer ad-free or charge double for it.

I think ads are extremely valuable to brands, more than we realize. It's basically allowed propaganda for consumerist behavior. I don't think we can set a pricetag on ads, which is why I don't think they'll ever go away. This is just temporary, don't get used to it.

Which streaming services added ads to their paid ad-free plan? I don't know of any, although many of them are not offered in my country.

HBO Max, Disney plus, netflix. So... you know, all the big ones. The only one that stands out really is Hulu, which always had ads.

Netflix most certainly didn't. They added a cheaper ad-supported plan. I don't know for sure about the other two.

Well but then they also raised their prices repeatedly so the cheaper plan isn't actually cheaper, it's what the ad-free plan used to cost.

Influencers like to stick ads right in their videos now so you can’t avoid that. Thankfully that’s just influencers and not other types of videos.

You're only stuck watching YouTube ads if you are on an Apple device. There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.

Adblockers/no-adblockers is missing the point. YT and other internet media WILL eventually be mostly ads just like TV became. And they WILL figure out ways to prevent blocking, in fact there are likely very smart and talented people on HN will devote their knowledge and expertise to achieve these ends in exchange for fat salaries. There will also be lobbying of course and I foresee that ad-skipping will eventually be criminalized (harshly) to ensure compliance. There is no escaping these fates. The only hope is a brand new form of media and the brief window of ad-escape it grants before it too is overrun and conquered by ads.

You can absolutely get rid of ads on an iOS device. You just need to use YouTube in safari.

> There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.

What about an LG TV, which is where I mostly watch YouTube? Think the platform is WebOS unless I'm mistaken.

Rooting your LG TV allows you to install homebrew apps. If you have a device that's at least a couple of years old and has not had its firmware updated, try https://rootmy.tv/

You can either root it or enable developer mode to install an ad-free youtube.

You can block YouTube ads in Safari on iOS/iPadOS. There are also alternative players you can sideload with AltStore or other methods, all without jailbreaking.

Can you share some methods? I have Pi-Hole but of course that doesnt work.

AdGuard or other Safari extensions for adblocking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdGuard

The discussion is specifically talking about watching on TVs. Those (usually) don’t have ad blockers natively. You can of course block outside of the platform.

Get a TV stick and put Smarttubenext on it, or put it on to the TV directly if possible.

web Youtube started preliminary work on muxing video on server - js player no longer fetches two separate standard video & audio sources, it gets binary encoded bundle instead. They will at some point hard switch to this method of injecting ads.

Or just pay them their $14/mo (or is it $8 now?). It’s revelatory.

It's 18EUR/month, or 21 freedom dollars, for me in Spain. Compared to what I used to pay for it, not worth it in the end.

The "they" that is shoving those mid-roll ads in the video is the content creator, not YouTube. YouTube won't stick ads in the middle of the video unless the creator opted in to monetize it.

Do you mean that creators choose explicitly how many ads to insert and their length? Because if it's just an ON/OFF switch and then Youtube proceeds to put almost equal lengths of ads than of content (1+ min ad after 2 minutes of content, as per the previous comment) then that's truly terrible.

Also... ads after only 2 minutes? Am I the only one who thinks that feels much worse to bear than longer ads more spaced out? There's something that feels odd with having to get interrupted by an ad after mere 100 seconds of watching something.

Yes. They can either let YouTube stick ads in or they can manually place them if they opt into mid-roll ads.

This is a bit misleading, IIUC. "Content creator" in this case means the nominal copyright-holder, which often means someone simply claiming copyright, in practice, and not necessarily the uploader ("Fair Use" be damned). The person who uploaded the video might have fully intended there to be no ads run during playback, but has little say in the matter if someone comes along and claims that their content is used in the video.

YouTube hack: when you see an ad, refresh the page.

If you're not sideloading an alternative YouTube client then yeah, you gotta put up with the ads.

ytdl-sub, I use it to load educational content into jellyfin for my kids, the config file format is poor, but it works well

Good for occasional use. Feed it a big playlist and you might find yourself IP-banned for a week.

haha, yes can confirm.