Free YouTube sucks just like anything else with ads, but YouTube doesn’t. Everybody wants everything for free these days with no contribution. YouTube is only as good as its creators. If you don’t like anybody on it… yeah it sucks I guess.
Unfortunately, like it seems all PeerTube instances, it’s not federated with much. I do understand why they’re all siloed but it makes PT kind of a non-starter for actual normal users so they all just use Mastodon instead.
Are you gonna say why not or are you just here to bitch? There are a littany of valid reasons to not like YouTube but in this entire thread I’ve not seen you say a single one.
Ads are intrusive; influencer culture is toxic; content creators have been incentivized to generate click bait type views; video game guides are 90% filler and not instructional at all but youtube algorithm prioritizes their content because of view counts; non-stop adverts for premium service; haven for white supremacist… I’ll stop here because obviously I have no valid critique of youtube.
You don’t know, right? No problem. You don’t have to watch the ads. It’s easy, I haven’t seen one for at least a year. You can search for good content, there’s no law that you have to watch the crap. But even if you do all that, you should not forget to donate to the content creators. Everybody has a few bucks here and there. I know, this new world demands much flexibility and learning from us, but you can do it if you put your mind to it.
I actually pay for YouTube premium. I know, I’m the literal devil according to some people on here.
It’s just that I like to watch a lot of cooking shows, infotainment, and long form visual essays on a couple of niche topics pertaining to my profession and YouTube happens to have a great cross section of that kind of content. And, if we’re being honest, I’ve gotten old enough where it’s just a huge waste of my time trying to get to the experience I want via hacks or workarounds. Specifically, an ad free one.
YouTube, Curiosity Stream and a usenet provider are the only subscriptions I pay for and I’m quite happy with what I get for ~$20 a month. To each their own though.
I don’t see a point in them. Why would I want to talk with a chat bot about the video I’m watching? Why would I care about YouTube comment summaries when YouTube comments are some of the lowest quality I’ve come across? These aren’t ‘features’ that I’d pay for specifically.
I originally got YT music which came with YT Red. I don’t like the price increases, but I have a family plan and 4 of the 6 spots are friends that pay me for access. It costs my wife and I about $6 a month for unlimited music streaming and ad free YT. I don’t have any problem paying for content as long as it’s accessible and not overly priced. YT isn’t free to run so Google has to make money somehow and that’s either ads or premium memberships. Some of that goes to content creators that I spend hours watching weekly.
I’ve read about how some of the ad content is displayed on videos it shouldn’t be, and some ads are overly intrusive, and that’s not good. Also, I don’t agree with many of Google’s practices as of late. That sucks, but until there’s a better option with the content I want to watch at a price I’m willing to pay around, I’ll happily pay my dues.
Way back when, when speciality cable became a thing, the big appeal to all these cable packages was “no ads, unlike regular television channels”.
Everybody started buying cable packages. And it was glorious! You could watch a show or a movie WITHOUT getting interrupted by stupid bullshit ads.
Then they started putting ads in between episodes or shows. People grumbled, but hey, it was between not during so … nobody pulled out (statistically speaking).
Then they’d put an ad in the middle. Just a short one. People grumbled, but hey, it was short. So nobody (statistically speaking) pulled out.
Over time, using salami tactics (one thin slice after another), ads got injected into all these speciality packages. In the end you got exactly the same as what you’d fled from. Only you paid ten times as much for it.
And nobody (statistically speaking) pulled out.
So guess what Youtube Premium is going to be doing? (Hint: history doesn’t repeat, but it sure as fuck rhymes!)
I believe that the existence of ad blockers do change the situation quite a lot.
I also pay for youtube premium. Before doing so I was using an adblocker and didn’t see a single ad before subscribing.
The reason I did so was that multiple creators I was following mentioning that a view from a premium subscriber was worth more to them financially than from a regular one.
It’s the easiest way for me to support multiple creators at once.
The moment my experience decreases, Youtube looses my support and I go Patreon instead. As ublock exists I don’t have to live through ads at all.
The moment I hear my first ad, I will be immediately dropping the service. My consumption you YT content will drop almost to nothing. I absolutely refuse to pay for a service that has ads. You don’t get it both ways.
I honestly answer surveys and have done so for a decade. YouTube doesn’t give me long ads. I can watch hours of YouTube without long, annoying ads. It’s a combination of choosing the correct content (nobody forces anyone to watch aggressively monetized content) and prioritizing results over ego (honestly answering the surveys vs lying on surveys to stick it to Google.)
I don’t care about users that make fragmented, entitled arguments, or who go out of their way to destroy their own UX by trying to sabotage systems. Until we nationalize YouTube and use taxes to fund hosting and moderation, YouTube is pretty great all things considered.
How do content creators make money on these alternatives? It’s a noble idea to get away from big corp, but someone has to foot that bill, so it’s either ads or subs. Nobody had a platform that rivals YT except for probably PH, and that’s not a real option.
It seems to me that most content creators make their money off things like patreon or selling merch, neither of which particularly ties them to Youtube.
By all means, you have content from a creator you like you want to consume that’s your deal. At the same time I believe youtube itself had done lots of disservice to the creators themselves but you’re free to explore that rabbit hole.
End of the day you accept its ads or subs for the content you want. Me personally would rather chew nails then consume what youtube is pushing but you do you.
YT isn’t pushing the content that I’m subscribed to. It’s hosting it and serving it when I want to watch it. In turn those creators make money so that they can continue creating content that I enjoy. There is no better platform for finding content on how to compete some tasks, like fixing something specific on a car, how to knit a scarf, or unbiased snowboard reviews. Without YT, that information does not exist to the general public for free or is not easily accessible. Can it be better? Absolutely. But it is absolutely a net gain for content creators regardless of the disservices you may be referencing, and as I mentioned, provided access to information not available anywhere else.
I get it, you want to ride youtubes dick because they monetized their platform. A task that can never happen on any other platform. Thats sarcasm btw.
As much as you want to believe it’s me that is being short sighted if you actually took a minute to evaluate the state of things you would concede things aren’t all that great from any perspective. It’s OK though. Your happy I’m happy. You do you.
I think a lot of them rely on Patreon, probably building their audiences on larger platforms and then veering off and taking their diehard fans with them, but I don't know of anyone that has been very successful doing that who isn't in the ragebait politics sector, and they all still use youtube if they can.
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