Hacker News Reader

Comment by douglee650 | Hacker News Reader

I pay YouTube Premium and get no ads there. It's totally worth it for me.

I get that they aren't performing less tracking on me, and they've labeled me as "will pay subscriptions for stuff".

But I get so much out of YouTube that's it's a no-brainer.

You can accomplish "no ads" and arguably substantially less tracking without Premium, though, with (e.g.) firefox and ublock origin. The only downside is an occasional ignorable warning that you're "seeing interruptions".

How does that get money to the people making the videos I like watching?

I'd suggest getting them money through patreon, kofi or whatever patrons system they use instead. That's much safer for them than YT ad money and helps them feel less pressure when they get demonetized or whatnot.

I probably watch too many channels to pay them each outside youtube, it will become quickly logistically unmanageable, if not unaffordable. The maximum I can do is probably 5 channels or so.

If there are that many channels you watch regularly, what slice of the pie does each one get from your youtube subscription, a few cents?

You could possibly pick one channel you like each month and give it a one-time $5 donation, which would be equivalent to years of ad revenue from a single viewer.

This also involves a significantly larger number of people getting my payment details, actual proper name, etc. Even if I wanted to pay individual channels, I'd probably still do it through the YouTube channel membership feature.

Next level is to reach out directly and ask them if you can just sponsor directly with said micropayment ($20/month). SUrprisingly, most say no.

Your special kindness is not worth $20/month to even moderately successful creators.

They still get views and subscribers, which increases the popularity of the channel, making it more likely to get recommended.

there's still an annoying pause in there on video load (and sometimes video skip/scrub) due to how youtube tries to thwart ad-blockers

Not when watching on an Apple TV.

Are we supposed to be shocked that one of the most locked down devices ever won't let you block ads?

Or, buy two Starbucks/month to set and forget

> I pay YouTube Premium and get no ads there. It's totally worth it for me.

You pay for YouTube and don't get ads there, but you also just put a big red target on your back for Google to show you ads in all of their other products because you've just outed yourself to them as someone with disposable income. You can't opt out of ads in search, your personal inbox, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com