Why give YouTube money? They make plenty off Premium, ads, and user data and still do shit like this. Not to mention the fact that they censor legal content, their algos have gotten worse, they broke search, they manually select most of the trending tab, false DMCAs get accepted constantly, and what little algos do work snuff out small channels who struggle to reach viewers like me because I keep getting recommended the same 5 videos regardless of what I watch.
Tl;dr fuck YouTube I genuinely hope LBRY or Peertube take its place sooner rather than later.
Because youtube is probably one of the most expensive sites on the net to run, it's also one of the most useful sites on the net full stop.
If ads are the problem, google provides a solution in Youtube Premium, a solution I should add that I frequently hear people on HN begging for e.g. "Don't make me deal with ads, let me just pay for it".
When the rubber meets the road though, people won't actually pay to remove ads, they, like you, will come up with any number of excuses to avoid doing so.
> If ads are the problem, google provides a solution in Youtube Premium, a solution I should add that I frequently hear people on HN begging for e.g. "Don't make me deal with ads, let me just pay for it".
Does it really work like that? I honestly don't know, I haven't tried - because I don't trust it, not after having its advert endlessly shoved in my face.
Would you trust a gangster to leave you alone if you agree to their protection racket? Why should I believe a company that engages in deeply immoral, antisocial activities, when they say that I can be spared from it if only I give them a bit of my money every month?
For as long as uBlock Origin and yt-dlp work, or any of their current and future alternatives work, I will not subscribe to YouTube Premium. I'll happily pay 2x that to uBO, though (if Gorhill was accepting donations), because with respect to YouTube, on top of not having ads, it gives me following extra features:
- Really no ads. Except the ones included by "content creators" themselves (one of these days I'll install SponsorBlock).
- Less tracking. Does YouTube Premium make Google track you less? Didn't think so.
- Less of the obnoxious UI "improvements". uBO also makes it easy to have some minimal control of my YouTube experience, by means like letting me delete or forever block UI clutter that I personally find annoying.
- Same and more benefits for embedded YouTube videos, as well as the whole web.
Wake me up when Google actually promises to not do user-hostile things in Premium, and when their word is actually worth anything.
Youtube is one of the most expensive sites because they chose to model their infustructure this way. Same reason facebook needs such massive servers. It wants control of the data.
Youtube could be re-done in a peer-to-peer format a la torrents. You subscribe to someone and watch their videos you're also re-uploading to others. Tada, massive server problems disapear.
Lol your peer will run 100% CPU whenever a video is requested on basic hardware. Live transcoding, subtitles, tagging. Every time a video is published your system becomes hugged to death. Nobody is able to watch videos normally unless there is some decent spread.
Nah end users don't want to have this problematic user experience.
Sending subtitles is sending a text file, not some monumental task. Even a cpu version of whisper only needs to be run once (and can be done by the uploader).
Not all devices need to do the same amount of work. Not all the work needs to happen when the screen is on and on battery power.
End users also don’t want to be bombarded with ads and spied on for the privilege of being bombarded with them.
No, YouTube DOESN’T provide a complete solution to ads. Once I pay for premium, I still have to sit through 2 -4 sponsor reads per video for many channels I follow. I know that’s not entirely on YouTube, but that doesn’t matter to me as a consumer. I pay, and ads are still there. That’s a no go for me.
Excuses. With premium you could install sponsor block and legitimately say you've paid for the content. Youtube would be happy because they don't care that you skip sponsor reads, the creator would be happy because they got your revenue from premium AND the sponsor can't tell you skipped so even they don't care.
In other words win, win, win.
But I'm assuming this still isn't enough for you to pay because as evidenced by this thread there is always some excuse why it's not possible to pay for the content watched while at the same time blocking ads.
So my genuine grievances with a platform are “excuses” for not giving them my hard-earned cash? Maybe you need to re-evaluate your relationship with YouTube.
I won’t give them my money nor time because on every level I find them a disgusting business. I only put up with them due to the fact that they are, unfortunately, the only major player in town with many content creators I enjoy. I wish they would move to FOSS solutions, but unfortunately adoption is slow amongst non-tech channels. Instead, I use RSS and Invidious to interface with the content I enjoy in a way far superior to YouTube’s own offerings, all for free. And thus I can take the money I save from Premium and give it to creators directly via donation services/merch.
If you believe its somehow “worth it” to support a multibillion company that is backed by an even larger corporation who has made it clear time and time again they don’t care about their creators, then by all means go ahead, but your assessment that these are “excuses” to “avoid” paying for a service I don’t require is detached from reality on every level.
If they are a "disgusting company" that "doesn't care about their creators" why are you still utilizing it!
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Its incredibly disingenuous to say all this, then go on to watch hours of YouTube a week.. Sounds like mental gymnastics to justify your continued enjoyment of their platform while sticking it to them.
I dislike Google, but damn sure I'm paying for youtube premium. I swear under my breath every month when they charge my card, but at the end of the day the value is there for me and my family, not sure what else to say....
I have my cake and eat it too. No ads, all the content creators I enjoy, I actually get notified of new uploads, and none of YouTube’s garbage. I get an even better experience than YT Premium for free, no ads included. It’s better for the creators I enjoy as well, because I pay even more than Premium in Patreons every month.
And if you bothered to read anything I said, you’d understand why I put up with YouTube. Content creators I enjoy haven’t adopted other, superior platforms. More and more swap to alternatives like LBRY, which is great, but unfortunately not enough to completely replace it. Though I never did say I watched “hours of YouTube a week”, in fact its increasingly losing prevalence in my life as I return to reading books.
Additionally, if you supposedly “dislike” Google, than why are you supporting them? Why are you defending the solution to a problem they themselves created? If I’m playing “mental gymnastics”, then it sounds like you’re training for the mental olympics with how far you’re defending your own purchasing habits.
You need to cut out the abusive lover that is YouTube out of your life, they’re genuinely not worth it. You can do better.
