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YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don't turn off your ad-blocker (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (61 children)

Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don't think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don't think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago* (31 children)

    For me personally, I would rather pay for a service than with my time via ads.

    That said, the services provided these days are unreliable, gatekept, metered and not enjoyable. Why should I pay for shitty service?

    Therefore I’m only left with one option and my wellies are strapped tight! 🫡

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

    I...honestly don't think you're particularly honest about this.

    Mainly because Youtube red exists and it's main sell is removing ads, but we already know the answer to that. (Most people don't actually want to buy the service)

    And it's not like it's shitty service. It's Youtube without ads.

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

    I don’t need music, I just want ad free YouTube. There isn’t an option for users like me.

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

    ...?

    Just use the ad free youtube...and don't use the music section?

    That's what I do 90% of the time....

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

    The price reflects including the music service whether you want it or not.

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

    How much do you really think they would take off of the price tag if you didn't have music? most similar subs are within the same price range....

    I always figured youtube music only existed to make the sub more incentivizing. It probably doesn't even cost them anything they aren't already spedning on youtube.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    It needs to be about half the price, if not less tbh. At its current price it’s rivaling netlflix, paramount, etc which are full studio’s producing the content, not just hosting it.

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  • [+] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (16 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn't you, they don't have to, and actively shouldn't, cater to you at all.

    You're just saying "I don't have an actual answer" in a roundabout way.

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

    The reason I don't bring them revenue is because they continue to make the experience worse. Paying isn't going to make that stop, it's just going to temporarily shift the bar a little; the bar is however still moving towards a shittier experience for all.

    Why would I look at this and go "Yes, I'll pay!" There are a lot of services I would genuinely pay for if I didn't have an impending dread that the service is just about to get worse again regardless of if I pay or not. It's not like paying is a magic bullet, either, it comes with a ton of different issues like privacy. They still sell your soul to advertisers if you pay them.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I paid for Lynda.com, and it could have easily taken in more business if YouTube wasn't working so hard for Google ads. There are a lot of paid (and free) services that suffer because of YouTubes ad-money business model.

    Netflix could use the extra business. There are plenty of services failing to thrive while YouTube exists. Peertube would be wide open if YouTube went the way of most of Google's stable of apps. PeerTube is wide open even if YouTube doesn't go away anyway.

    People genuinely hate ads. It's a high degree of enshitification. YouTube could divide into paid content and free content in a simple Freemium model.

    Or, add third tier with ads, which any user can opt out of in the same way contributers can. I'd be happy to click subscribe on an ad free experience with less content available to me.

    Or, add an option for a couple of free tier items per month, week, or day. Like Medium's business model.

    It's not hard to stop sucking!

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.

    Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.

    Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.

    And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Additionally, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. Spending resources to manipulate people is not really beneficial to humanity as a whole. If it were up to me, it would be banned.

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

    Subsidise it with your other services

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

    From a financial standpoint, that doesn’t make any sense though. Why would you continue to run a service that is a net drain on the rest of your business? Unless it can offer some meaningful, tangible benefit to the company, why continue to operate it at all? If a service needs to be subsidized to survive, why does it need to survive?

    Google has basically used it to increase their tracking capabilities across the web. They know when you visit any site with an embedded YouTube video. But that’s only possible because they’re already a massive company. And it’s not reasonable to expect them to continue subsidizing it out of the goodness of their hearts. After all, if you’re willing to ask them to subsidize it, why aren’t you willing to help by paying for premium? It’s easy to say “just subsidize it” when it’s not your money.

    To be clear, I don’t pay for premium and probably never will. But this thread has a lot of emotionally charged “because I want it” responses, which aren’t really grounded in reality. YouTube has operated at a loss for a decade, and only continued to operate because it had the backing of a tech giant. But if that tech giant wants to stop subsidizing the site and finally make the site profitable, that’s their prerogative. Yes, it’s the final step in the enshittification process. Yes, it means free users will have a worse experience. But ultimately, the company isn’t required to care about the free users.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Not OP, but I personally would like to see a variety of options for how I see ads. Not what ads I see, but how they're delivered. I imagine several less intrusive options and the option to continue ads as they are now. I would need two or three less intrusive options combined to cover my viewing, or I could take only the current annoying interrupting ads on their own.

    On second thought, YouTube would just end up turning on all options and stopping playback for anyone who finds the options list.

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