You sound like an ad. It triggered my uncanny valley response. Please never do that again.

I will never pay Google a dime. They make enough off of us. It's really easy to download the video you want to watch and watch it on a stand alone player with you guessed it, NO FUCKING ADS.

as an occasional creator of internet videos,I would much rather host my own videos, because bandwidth is actually very cheap. but YouTube has a complete monopoly on internet video, so I have to host my video on their website, subject to their weird and arbitrary conditions, their trigger happy copyright system, and their general terrible treatment of their creators. they pay an absolute pittance for impressions, which is why most professional YouTubers use other revenue streams

the company, Google, that you are paying, didn't make the videos, doesn't fairly compensate the people who did, and they are effectively holding them and the very concept of internet video hostage

people on Lemmy mostly support a free, non-corpo, decentralised internet instead of the parasites at Google because Lemmy is free and decentralised and non corporate

get real

I'm not paying just to get back what we used to have without ad blockers. They need to offer more than just no ads. Like exclusive content.

Also:

plus saved video progress so you can resume videos later

You say that as if it's a premium only feature. It's not.

Will that fix their horrible site and mobile app that constatntly breaks on me? I'm not going to pay a corporation that treats users and creators like shit and can't even make a good way to interact with the service with all that money. If they prpvided a fantastic service and were pro-consumer and pro-creator then I totally would. But they're the opposite of that.

I use premium and even I cringed at this. The first two thirds of this are written like an AI generated ad.

I signed up for a family plan a couple years ago and it's honestly one of the last subscriptions I would cancel. I can justify it by the literally hundreds of hours of watching ads me and my family would have been subjected to otherwise.

What you don't understand is that if YouTube manages to get enough people by the balls with their anti-adblocking efforts, the next step is to start jacking up the subscription price year after year to see how much people are willing to pay.

I prefer subscription models. That way I'm paying with my money and not my content. Of course with Google you're doing both.. but in principle I support it. I pay for a family plan and have some friends/ family on it.

It hate ads and to me it's easily worth the monthly fee. I looked up a YouTube video on a TV that wasn't signed in and there was like 60 seconds of ads! I've had YouTube premium / red for years I didn't realize it was getting so bad.

But yeah, I support subscription model. More sustainable and honest way for a website to make a profit. In a subscription you are the buyer and the website is the product. In a free model ad companies are the buyer and you are the product.

They have more incentive under the subscription model to create a better experience for the user. In a free they have incentive to squeeze user as much as possible. I think it's one of the main drivers of enshittification

I pay for YouTube. It is without a doubt the best subscription I pay for, that I get major use out of. I know people are hardcore anti-ad and Google is like Ad Satan, but if you can afford it, YouTube is unironically worth it.

The monthly payment for my family subscription is less than 2 tickets to the movies, not including gas, popcorn, kids, etc.

Easily the most bang for the buck entertainment we get, we watch hours of YouTube every day. News, tech reviews, travel, kids songs, tutorials...

I canceled Disney+ and Netflix, but YouTube premium is not going anywhere.