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Subscriptions Are Ruining Our Lives. Here's Why They're Everywhere Now. | You'll own nothing and you'll be happy! (www.youtube.com)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -12 points 2 years ago (30 children)

Fuck ads and fuck subscriptions

How do you imagine developers and content creators to get paid if neither of these two options is acceptable to you?

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Honestly mate, I am not a tankie or even politically left in my country, but when looking at the insane results for these enormous companies and the ever increasing greed with ads/price hikes, I’ve just had enough.

    I know it’s not morally right to steal, but I refuse to support companies like Alphabet paying their CEO 200+ million a year. If they manage to block me out when skirting their ads, then I’ll find something else to spend my time on.

    So you’re right, I just don’t care anymore.

    I do pay for Nebula though!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    100%

    Your local library usually has a host of FREE media types. Including regular ol books, which thankfully still remain ad-free.

    (But also movies, and digital readers, and news articles, etc).

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Pay por the permanent ownership of the sold product.

    As they say. If selling isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.

    If a seller doesn't give me option to own their products I will certainly never steal them.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    But how do you apply this to a platform like YouTube? I don't want to have to buy each video I watch.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Sell "seasons".

    Put a prize on all videos released during each year. But once that's paid I can have those videos forever.

    No point on having to pay a monthly subscription forever to watch a video made 10 years ago from a youtuber that's no longer active (maybe even alive).

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    by selling me a license that lets me run their software on my own machine, not theirs. Like in the old times

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  • [+] -11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Doesn't quite work with something like streaming services

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    It could if they actually let you download the content for a change.

    And no I mean original quality, not split up undecipherable files that are hard to organize outside of their platform

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I tend to feel that if it’s a streaming service providing access to a wide range of videos, it could be argued that you don’t own them and, therefore, can’t download them either. However, you could still have the option to pay extra to actually purchase the video too. That money should go to the creator, though, who, of course, would also set the price. That could be free too. I, for example, have no issue with people watching my car repair 'tutorials' on YouTube for free.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    Man Google had it just right with Google music and books. Of course they threw it all away.

    I was a big fan of Google music because I was able to upload my own music on to the cloud and they would help me tag albums. The streaming of new music was just the cherry on top and it was awesome when Google told me to check out a new album based on what I uploaded previously. Not only that, but they let you pay for music that you wanted to keep offline as well.

    Now it's all crammed into YouTube, which is horrible for music as it was never designed for music anyway

    To this day, I still think this was the best compromise all around and it seemed very ethical and modern to the way we consume music.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Theres A difference between running a profitable buisness and ruining the whole user experience to please the shareholders.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Am a developer, please do not pay for any software subscription if you don’t think it’s worth it.

    Us devs would love to give the best experience, but if the customer is willing to pay for a shit experience, guess which path management makes you take.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Not everything should be for profit. I 'member the good old days when people made poorly designed website to share their passion and help others. I 'member the good old days when people developed freewares, even proprietary softwares, just for the fun of it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Sure, but it's also a fact that many of the YouTubers whose videos I deeply enjoy wouldn't be able to make them if it didn't make them any money

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Which is why I would rather go with spending my money on YouTubers via things like Patreon, Kofi, GitHub Sponsers or even just get some merch. I would much rather go that route than spend money on YouTube to just not have ads. Yes, it’s a subscription, but at least from one of the creators that I watch, even just 1 dollar a month is much more money than what they get from ad revenue from a single person

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Sure, I have nothing against that. I, however, still think that whatever platform hosts their videos deserves some compensation, right? So that's going to be either subscribtion, ads or donations.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    You make a very good point there. I’d probably be more inclined to allow ads on YouTube if they weren’t so intrusive to my privacy and weren’t trying to push scams or overly sexualized mobile games every 4 seconds. (Although I’m not sure if it’s still that bad, I completely uninstalled the YouTube app after it got that bad and exclusively use FreeTube now).

    The YouTube premium subscription also seems like quite a bit. $13.99 for that and YouTube music, I don’t want YouTube music, I just want no ads.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I spend LOTS of money on physical media. Like on the order of thousands per year. If a company doesn't release their media physically, I figure they don't want my money and just pirate it.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    How do you apply this to a platform like YouTube? I don't even finish most of the videos I start watching there, and the ones I do, I'll likely never watch again anyway. Subscribtion seems much more logical profit model to a company like that.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Free video sharing platforms are basically not viable as a business model. For a free and open internet to succeed, YouTube has to fail. At the moment, it only exists because Google subsidises it.

    The ideal way for video sharing to work is for large content creators to set up their own federated video hosting websites (or pay for someone else to do it for them) and potentially offer some small amount of free capacity for those who want to upload small, not-for-profit videos

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You don't need to pay a subscription fee to watch YouTube. What are you even talking about?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    He was discussing options where people oppose both ads and subscriptions as methods of payment for consumed media.

    IMO YouTube Premium is the only subscription that I will probably never cancel as not only does it pay more to content creators than ad revenue does (per individual viewing), it directly financially supports the hundred-odd creators I enjoy (large and small).

    If the cost is too high for you to justify, you can band together with friends to split the costs of a Family Plan and/or do as I do and VPN back to my home country where the cost is significantly less than it is where I live now!

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    FUCK CONTENT, LET ALL THE MINDLESS DISTRACTION DIE, WE'D BE BETTER OFF IN THE STREETS, SPENDING TIME TOGETHER, BUILDING SOMETHING, ACTUALLY TALKING TO EACH OTHER!
    Says a tiny edgelord in me. I would never write something like this, I'm an adult.

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